Candidates In Time
by HistyIsPissty
Summary: Having one CPU Candidate end up in the past is bad enough, but all four? Sheesh, I don't think even Gamindustri is going to be able to- what's that? They're all from different timelines too? Well... let's just hope there's enough duct tape to patch up the world once they're through with it.
1. Tripping Down Memory Lane

**Welcome one and all to my new story! I had this crazy idea floating around in my head for a long while and I figured I should finally make use of it. After all, it's never a good idea to hold back one's insanity for too long.**

 **To go more in-depth as to what was in the summary, the basic setup is that the future versions of each of the CPU Candidates mysteriously end up in the same time period in the past. However, all four of them are from different futures which means that they're all technically strangers with one another. To make matters worse, all of them will end up having differing opinions on what to do with their unique situation once they finally meet up. As you can imagine, this will result in some pretty wacky interactions that may or may not end up destroying all of Gamindustri in the process.**

 **To keep things a bit grounded throughout all this mayhem though, I decided to keep Rom as the 'normal' one of the four. She'll be from a future that most closely follows canon compared to the rest of the other Candidates. While she won't exactly be the meek little girl everyone knows (she is a fully grown woman in her timeline after all), she will definitely be a lot less crazy than the other Candidates. As for what exactly the other Candidates will be like... well, you'll just have to wait and find out. :P**

 **Anyways, this will mostly be a side project with my main focus still being** _ **Greenlit Trouble.**_ **Depending on the reception though, I could shift some more attention to this story if enough people are interested in it. Don't worry though, I'll make sure that both stories have a proper ending... sometime within the next century or so.**

 **Okay, enough about that. Let's get started with this bizarre journey back to the past!**

* * *

 **Ch 1: Tripping Down Memory Lane**

"...You have got to be kidding me."

It took Rom less than ten seconds upon waking up in the moonlit room to figure out that she was in the past. This was mostly due to three very important things:

1) She was inside her old childhood bedroom. The very same bedroom that had been completely atomized during her teenage years when Ram had come up with the brilliant idea of fusing a Blue Shell with a Power Star.

2) Her current share reserves felt pitifully low compared to what she had as a fully fledged CPU. In fact, she thought she could even faintly feel the presence of Blanc connected to the Lowee share crystal – something she had not felt since her older sister had retired from her position several decades ago.

3) She was back in her child body. Her utterly _flat_ child body.

The last point stuck out to Rom the most as she felt a massive tinge of annoyance and disappointment. While she was not as obsessed about her figure as Vert was, she had still been rather proud of the fact that she had managed to break the Lowee status quo and develop a rather modest bust size. Unfortunately for her, fate apparently wanted to troll her as she found herself resembling a human washboard once again.

"Well... at least Ram isn't here to make fun of me about it."

Right as she said this, a loud grating sound suddenly came from next to her.

Reacting on instinct, Rom immediately turned towards the disturbance with an incineration spell forming up in her raised hand.

"Who's there?!"

To her surprise, all she found was the child version of Ram sleeping next to her on the bed. As she watched, the source of the earth-shaking sound from before became apparent as the younger twin let out another massive snore.

Sweatdropping at this revelation, Rom allowed the tension to leave her body. As she did so, however, she noticed a rather peculiar smell.

"...smoke? Why would there be- HOLY ELECTRIC MOUSE!"

As it turned out, some of the stray embers from her oddly unstable incineration spell had ended up setting her side of the bed on fire. Acting out in a panic, Rom quickly dispelled the fireball in her hand and charged up a water spell to put out the blaze. Unfortunately, it seemed that her finely-honed control over the elements had not been carried over to her younger body as she accidentally ended up summoning a large gust of wind instead.

"GYAAAA! NO NO NO NO NO! THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANTED!"

As the fire roared to life thanks to the sudden gale, Rom desperately blasted out the first low-level ice spell she could think of.

"E-Force Blizzard!"

The good news was that the concentrated blast of snow and ice managed to put out all the flames. The bad news was that Rom now resembled a miniature snowman with all the frost covering her.

Coughing up the large amount of snow that had gotten into her mouth, she glared out into the darkened room with an expression that nearly matched the flatness of her current chest.

"...I hate my life."

The only response she got was Ram giving another oblivious snore in her sleep.

* * *

"Ugh. How did I manage to get anywhere with these stubby little legs?!"

Rom shouted this out in a muffled voice as she found herself lying face-flat on the hallway floor for the fifteenth time that night.

After magically clearing up all the snow and properly tucking in her sister with the partially singed blanket, Rom had decided to head out to grab a drink. While she would have loved nothing more than to grab a bottle of sake at the moment, she knew her current body would not be able to handle it and had decided to get some tea instead. The only problem, however, was that her mind and body were completely out of sync with each other thanks to her unexpected time leap. As a result, she kept unconsciously overextending her legs and tripping herself up in the process.

Picking herself off the floor once again, Rom dusted off her pajamas with a grumble.

"Fighting that planet-sized turtle on top of a galaxy reactor was easier than this..."

Shaking her head with a sigh, the chronologically displaced CPU resumed walking forward...

…only to find herself lying on the floor three steps later.

"Screw it. It's time for Plan B."

While she could have simply activated her HDD to fly to the kitchens, the low amount of shares she felt in this timeline made her hesitant to use it. Instead, she decided to come up with a different mode of transportation.

Propping herself up to a sitting position, Rom took a deep breath and raised her right hand.

Projection magic had never been her forte but the object she had in mind did not require too much effort to create. Even with her low share reserves, heavily imbalanced mental and physical energies, child-like control, and various other time travel-related issues, her magical genius still shone through as she managed to construct a simple wooden trolley before her.

"Eh... I guess it'll do."

All in all, the wooden construct seemed fairly decent considering her limitations. It was essentially just a large, rectangular plank with a wheel on the bottom of each of its four corners but it seemed sturdy enough to fulfill her purpose.

Moving carefully, she got on top of the trolley so that she was now sitting on top of it. After fumbling through her inventory for a bit, she managed to find her old pencil-staff before holding it down towards the floor. With a rather adorable blush on her face, Rom used her childhood weapon as a make-shift oar to push off against the carpeted floor.

"I am so glad Ram and Uni aren't here to see this..."

With that, Rom - the famed CPU of Lowee, the master of a trillion spells, and the widely-accredited Professor of the Arcane - slowly paddled her way down the hallway in her makeshift land boat.

* * *

"Well, it's certainly no chamomile but tea is tea I suppose."

It had taken Rom nearly half an hour to get all the way over to the kitchens but she had finally managed to get her hands on a drink.

Not trusting her clumsy child body with any sort of preparations involving hot water, she had been forced to search the refrigerator for some iced tea instead. Vert would have probably had an aneurysm if she ever found out that her fellow tea enthusiast had chosen to drink a bottle of cheap artificial green tea but Rom was too tired from her journey to be picky.

Now sitting at the small side table in the kitchen while sipping her drink, Rom decided to finally think over her current situation.

Funnily enough, the fact that she had traveled to the past was not her primary concern. Having been involved in countless time-related shenanigans in her past (or would it be considered future?) Rom knew that the chances of her creating a paradox or destroying the space-time continuum was fairly low since the multiverse theory seemed to hold true. Heck, she had even ended up as the CPU of Tari during one of her earlier time travel adventures (long story) and her own timeline had remained as normal/insane as ever when she had returned home.

The one major difference that grabbed her attention though was the fact that only her mind – or potentially just her memories – had been transported to the past this time. As it was, all of her past time-travel experiences had been with her being physically sent to the past, boobs and all.

Scowling a bit at the reminder of her complete flatness again, Rom took a long swig of her tea before continuing her train of thought.

While this difference in time travel method did make her very curious, she decided to leave this matter for later and focus on the main source of concern for her at the moment: the fact that she had absolutely no idea who or what had caused her sudden trip back in time. All of her previous incidents had had a clear instigator or major clue as to what had happened (usually Ram pulling a prank, MAGES. messing around with a microwave, or Nepgear 'upgrading' a DeLorean) but this instance had none of those things. The most noteworthy thing that had happened before she had gone to sleep and woken up in her child body was Uni gifting her some new coffee beans the morning before.

 _'Maybe those coffee beans had some kind of hallucinogen and I'm simply imagining all of this?'_

Ram quickly shook her head as she remembered how real her impromptu blizzard and all her face-planting felt. And asides from that, she knew Uni was not the type to do such a thing.

The Lastation CPU was the type to blast people with a surprise, nuclear-powered air cannon as a 'prank' instead.

Wincing a bit at the memory of being blasted all the way from Lowee to Leanbox, Rom refocused on the main problem at hand.

Without knowing the cause or reason for her predicament, she had no idea how to proceed in order to return back to her future. While there was always the option of using a time manipulation spell on herself, she knew this was more or less a last-resort type of plan. Even for one as well-studied as her, using magic to manipulate abstract concepts such as time or reality was a foolhardy endeavor at best and downright apocalyptic at worst. Her former attempts at trying to emulate Uzume's reality-bending powers proved this to her quite clearly when she had accidentally transformed the entire planet into a giant Blanc Manju (she had been rather hungry at the time).

Letting out a large sigh, Rom leaned back in her chair before taking another sip of her drink.

While it was far from her preferred course of action, it seemed her best bet at the moment was to utilize the tried-and-true 'Neptune Method'. In other words, lazing around until the plot progressed to the point of automatically providing her with some answers.

"Well, maybe this isn't too bad," she muttered aloud, trying her best to remain optimistic. "I can just think of this as a little vacation."

Considering all the paperwork that had been stacking up lately, the prospect of her taking some off-time (even if it was in the past) began to seem rather enticing. If she was lucky, she could have even ended up in a time just before a big festival. While getting used to and moving around in her child body would be annoying, the prospect of relaxing, playing games, eating as much yakitori as she wanted, and watching fireworks with her family and friends did seem-

"Rom? What are you doing here at this hour?"

It was a good thing Rom had not been drinking her tea at the moment or she probably would have spit it out in surprise the moment she recognized the person who had just walked into the kitchen.

"M... Mina?!"

All thoughts of having a relaxing vacation in the past went completely out the window at the sight of her old nanny/mentor. Or more specifically, the sight of the Oracle's red scholar's garb and hat.

Though her childhood memory was a bit fuzzy, Rom distinctly recalled that Mina had only worn that outfit _before_ she had left on her extensive training trip to who-knows-where. This heavily narrowed down the possibilities of what time period she was currently in. Add in the fact that Lowee's shares seemed to be critically low and that Blanc's presence in the share crystal felt extremely weak and-

"Rom, are you feeling okay?" Mina interrupted, walking over towards her with a look of concern. "Did you have another nightmare?"

Suppressing the rising feeling of dread within her, Rom shook her head and reluctantly decided to confirm whether or not her worst fears were true.

"Mina," Rom called out, her serious tone causing the already worried Oracle to frown even further. "Where's Blanc?"

Seeing Mina's expression fall into one of sadness was enough of an answer on its own.

"Oh, Rom," the Oracle said, crouching down to give her a comforting hug. "I know you miss your sister but please try to stay strong. If we continue to have faith in her, she'll definitely return to us."

Well, it was official. She had clearly pissed off the True Goddess somehow. After all, why else would she have ended up right at the start of the Deity of Sin incident AKA one of the most chaotic and turbulent moments of her life? The only way this could have been worse was if she ended up in the time period where an evil wizard had erased every single pudding from existence (witnessing Neptune go through pudding withdrawal was _not_ an experience anyone should have to go through twice).

Regardless, Rom now realized that she was stuck reliving one of the worst moments of her history with an unwieldy child body as well as limited magical capabilities to boot. Faced with all this, she could only come up with one fitting response to say.

"Well fuck."


	2. Pancakes and Explosions

**Ch 2: Pancakes and Explosions**

Dropping the F-bomb in front of Mina was not the dumbest mistake Rom had ever made but it definitely ranked up there with her drunken attempts to use a Bombchu as a sled. Thankfully, Mina had apparently been feeling rather merciful that day as she had only used three bars of soap to wash out her mouth with rather than the expected ten.

After surviving through that humiliating ordeal, Rom had been too drained to do anything else other than to stumble back to her room. Deciding to put her issues on hold for the time being, she had sneaked back into bed with the full intention of sleeping in until noon.

Unfortunately, she forgot to take into account one very important and loud detail.

"Hey Rom! Wake up! Mina's making us pancakes!"

Rom simply let out an irritated and tired groan as she tried her best to ignore her twin sister. A rather futile effort though considering Ram was currently shaking her with enough force to make the entire bed shake.

"Come on, Rom! It's pancakes! Pancakes!"

Rom gave a wince as she was sure that even the people down in Leanbox heard that last shout.

"Leave me alone Ram," she mumbled out. "I've had a long night."

"You went to bed at the same time as me! Now get up, get up, get up!"

Apparently deciding she needed some further encouragement, Ram grabbed her pillow and began to playfully whack her over the head with it.

Knowing that trying to continue sleeping in this situation was a lost cause, Rom reluctantly pulled herself up with another groan.

"Why couldn't I have ended up in a time period when I had my own room already?" she muttered groggily to herself.

Ram stopped smacking her with the pillow as she shot her a confused look.

"Huh? Time period? What are you talking about?"

Rom covered for her slip-up with a tired sigh. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

Her twin did not seem convinced though as she leaned in closer to inspect her.

"Are you feeling okay Rom? You're acting a bit weird."

Suppressing her urge to give a snarky retort, Rom dismissed her sister's concern with a wave of her hand.

"I'm fine Ram. I'm just still feeling a bit sleepy. Don't worry about it."

Seeing Ram continue to give her a worried look, she gave another sigh.

"Really, I'm fine. Why don't you go tell Mina to make us some extra pancakes? I'm sure that'll cheer me up."

This did the trick in distracting her sister as she immediately tossed aside her pillow and zoomed out of the room with enough speed to leave behind an afterimage.

"At least dealing with her is the same as ever," Rom grumbled.

Deciding she might as well go and wash her face, she lethargically got out of bed...

only to trip over the pillow that Ram had left on the floor.

"Son of a-!"

* * *

"Pancake! Pancake! Yummy yummy pancake!"

Ram's cheerful chanting greeted Rom as she slowly dragged herself into the dining room.

"Ah! You're finally here Rom!" the younger twin called out upon noticing her. "You're such a slow-"

The rest of her words died off as she fully took in the state her sister was in.

"Don't ask," Rom grunted out, her face and hair still smoking a bit in places as she shuffled her way towards the dining table.

In hindsight, she really should have known better than to try and obliterate the offending pillow with an Armageddon spell in her current state (keyword being 'try'). For that matter, using a spell like that was a bad idea in general but venting her frustrations with explosive magic was a bad habit of hers that she had developed as a teenager and had never been able to break.

Ignoring Ram's open-mouthed stare, Rom took a seat across from her with a world-weary sigh.

"Ugh. I can't believe I'm saying this but I'd much rather deal with paperwork instead," she let out in a disgruntled voice.

Ram did not get a chance to question this as Mina chose this moment to appear before them carrying a large serving dish piled high with what could only be described as the Leaning Tower of Pancakes.

"Sorry about the wait you two! Now who's ready for some- Rom!" The towering stack of pancakes wavered dangerously as the Oracle stopped in surprise upon seeing the Candidate's disheveled form. "What happened to you? Were you experimenting with magic without my supervision again?!"

Rom immediately jerked up in fear at her nanny's stern tone. Realizing that telling Mina the truth would probably get her into more trouble, she decided to simply go along with the story she had been provided with.

"I'm sorry Mina!" Rom squeaked out. "I... I just... um... read about this new fire spell and I really wanted to try it out. I'm sorry about doing it without your permission."

Deciding to play it safe, she even gave out a small dose of her puppy-dog eyes.

While it had been a long, _long_ , time since she had been able to utilize her child cuteness like this, it seemed she still retained her knack for it as Mina's disapproving expression quickly crumpled.

"Please be more careful Rom," the Oracle sighed, putting down the large plate of pancakes onto the table. "I understand you're eager to learn new spells but trying them out without first learning how to properly control them is extremely dangerous."

Rom barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes at this. After all, it was not like she was a recognized professor in her timeline with a PhD in practically every field of magic imaginable or anything.

Still, she knew Mina had no way of knowing this so she decided to simply accept the advice for what it was and nodded her head.

The Oracle seemed pleased with this response and was just about to let her off the hook when Ram spoke up.

"You learned a new spell? Oh! Is that why our bed looked a bit burnt this morning? Did you try it out last night and set it on fire?"

Rom had never wanted to chuck something at her sister's face as much as she did right then.

* * *

The rest of breakfast passed by rather uneventfully following the massive scolding she got from Mina.

Once they were done with their meal, the Oracle told her and Ram that they were free for the rest of the day as she had some important meetings to deal with. As Mina left the room with the dirty plates, Rom immediately decided to use this opportunity to head towards the library to gather some more information.

Sadly, her plans were waylaid the moment she reached the dining room door.

"Hey Rom! Let's go play some Super Smash Sisters!"

Rom barely had time to face her twin before Ram grabbed her by the hand and tried to drag her towards their room. Unfortunately, the sudden tug ended up offsetting Rom's precarious sense of balance which resulted in her face-planting onto the floor yet again.

"Gah-!"

"Ah! I'm sorry Rom!"

It was a good thing her sister apologized right away or Rom really might have exploded right there. Even so, she could not help but mutter darkly as Ram helped her back onto her feet.

After dusting herself off, she raised her head to find her twin looking at her with a surprised look.

"What?" Rom snapped, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice.

Ram simply continued to giver her a baffled stare for a few seconds before finally responding.

"You're... not crying?"

"Why the fu... I mean, why would I cry over something like this?"

It was only after seeing Ram's disbelieving face that Rom's stressed out mind remembered that she was currently back in her child body.

"Oh... right..."

Realizing the sticky situation she had put herself in, Rom debated whether or not she should just tell Ram the truth. After a quick thought though, she decided against it. While she had no qualms about altering the past, causing too many reckless changes this early on could potentially lead to the timeline veering off in an unpredictable and dangerous direction. While she normally would have been confident enough in her abilities to deal with any new threats that arose, her current body was far too handicapped for her to safely make such a choice.

Plus, she really did not want to spend the whole day explaining her backstory to Ram.

Focusing back on her shocked sister, Rom chose to simply pass off her uncharacteristic behavior with a small shrug.

"We all have to grow up sometime Ram. And besides, crying isn't going to solve anything."

After all, freezing, burning, and otherwise horribly mutilating your problems was a much better way of dealing with them instead.

Meanwhile, Ram seemed to consider her words for a moment before her expression slowly morphed into one of jubilant praise.

"Wow Rom! That's totally awesome that you're not going to cry anymore! You're like a real grown-up now!"

Rom gave a slight wince at just how true that last part was. Covering for this with a slight cough, she quickly tried to shift topics and make her escape.

"Um... thanks. Anyways, I'm going to head to the library now so..."

"What?" Ram's smile quickly fell as she faced her with a petulant look. "But the library's boring! I don't want to waste time there! Come on, let's go play some games instead!"

"We don't have to go together," Rom said, trying her best to keep calm despite her growing impatience. "Why don't you play by yourself for a bit and I'll meet you back in our room later?"

"No! You're going to play Super Smash Sisters with me right now!"

Rom was just about to snap at her twin's immature behavior when she remembered just how attached Ram had been to her as a child. It was kind of hard to believe considering how fiercely independent Ram was in the future but this was clearly a time period where her sister could not stand to be separated from her for any longer than a few minutes. In fact, while her memories of the time were a bit hazy, she was pretty sure the reason Ram had been so unfriendly to Nepgear during their initial meeting was because she had been jealous of her taking Rom's attention away from her.

Realizing this was another issue on her ever-growing pile of problems to deal with, Rom gave a tired sigh. Getting Ram to drop her over-dependence on her was definitely going to be a long-term endeavor that would require a gentle touch. To that end, upsetting her right now would only prove to be detrimental to her plans.

"Fine," she let out. "We'll play for an hour. After that I'm going to the library."

Ram did not seem to hear the last part as she gave a loud cheer. Before Rom could protest, she grabbed her hand and tried to drag her forward once again.

Luckily, the carpeted floor did a pretty good job at muffling all the swearing that followed.

* * *

It was a quarter past noon by the time Rom finally managed to make her way to the library. Ram had practically held her hostage for the past couple hours as she had refused to let her stop playing with her. Any and all attempts to leave their room had been met with an increasing order of tantrums, violence, and eventually even the dreaded puppy-dog eyes. In fact, the only reason Rom had managed to escape at all was because Ram was currently taking her afternoon nap.

As she entered into the vast halls of the Basilicom library, Rom let out a large yawn as she realized just how tired she was feeling as well. Even without her mental fatigue, her child body naturally needed more sleep and her late night excursion probably did not help matters either. Unfortunately, she needed to gather more information on her situation to properly plan out a course of action and now was her best chance to get it.

"I could really use an espresso shot right now," she mumbled out.

With no source of caffeine nearby, she opted for the next best thing. After a bit of fumbling due to her faulty magical control, she managed to cast a simple Concentration spell to keep herself awake.

"Whew. Much better. Now then, where did we use to put all the old newspapers?"

Saying that, she began her search down the countless aisles of towering bookshelves.

After walking along in silence for a couple minutes, she briefly noted that she was slowly starting to get accustomed to her child body. A big sign of this was that she could now keep her face off the ground for longer than a minute as long as she maintained a relatively slow pace and there were no unexpected obstacles in her path. Sadly, she was also starting to realize that her child legs were naturally unsteady to begin with which probably explained Ram's earlier comment about her frequently falling over and crying.

"What I wouldn't do to have my regular body back," she sighed. She suddenly stopped in her tracks though as an idea popped into her head. "Hey, wait..."

Deciding she might as well try it out, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the small amount of shares she had.

"HDD activate!"

Once the transformation ended and the light faded away, Rom slowly looked down at herself expectantly.

"...Dammit."

Her faint hope of possibly regaining her adult body while transformed was thrown out the window when she saw herself still stuck in her child form. Even worse, the skin-tight plug suit she now wore only served to highlight just how flat she really was.

With a dark scowl, she canceled out the transformation and resumed her walk down the bookshelves.

"Stupid time travel. I swear, once the plot finally reveals the fucker that sent me here, I'm going to..."

The rest trailed off into a long and creative list of ways she would get her vengeance that probably would have made even Iris Heart feel a bit disturbed.

Her ranting lasted for several more minutes before she finally found what she was looking for. Giving a disgruntled complaint at just how much easier this would have been if her current phone had a web browser on it (Mina clearly did not trust her or Ram with unsupervised internet access yet), she headed off towards the central reading desks with a large stack of recent newspapers in tow.

The next hour or so was spent researching her current time period as she flipped through the numerous papers. While most of them simply dealt with the ever-increasing number of problems caused by the ASIC, she did manage to pick up on one very important fact.

According to the various reports, the CPUs had apparently been missing for about two years at this point in time. This was a very crucial piece of info for Rom as it gave her a solid time frame to work with. While her memory of this era was spotty at best due to how far back in her past it had been, she was still fairly certain that their big adventure had started about three years after the CPUs had been captured. In that case, she now knew that she had roughly another year to get herself ready before the inevitable clash with the ASIC and the Deity of Sin.

"Well, I've had tighter schedules than this before," she muttered with a frown. "Still, leaving Blanc in that graveyard for a whole year..."

Even if she knew that this was technically not _her_ Blanc, she still wanted nothing more than to go save her older sister right then and there. Of course, she knew she was more likely to blow herself up at the moment considering all her recent attempts at using any sort of offensive magic.

"Tch. Talk about annoying."

Suppressing her irritation at her current helplessness, she quickly skimmed through the last few newspapers just in case she could find anything else.

Nothing else really stuck out to her as she read which was mostly a good thing since it meant that the past was progressing as she remembered it. There were a few odd reports about Lastation enforcing stricter border control as well as unusual military activity but the reports on them were rather vague seeing as how she was reading the Lowee papers. Seeing as how she had never really paid any attention to this sort of thing as an actual kid, Rom figured this was simply Kei's attempts at combating the rising influence of the ASIC.

"Alright, enough research then. It's time I got to work."

Putting aside the newspapers in a neat pile, Rom got up from the desk and walked over to an isolated corner of the library where she was less likely to be spotted.

While her abysmal spell control was a major issue, there was not much she could do about it other than to manually train herself up again. What she _could_ do at the moment, however, was to gather up a secondary source of energy to use in place of the pitifully low amount of shares she currently had.

After looking around to make sure she was truly alone, Rom pulled out a marker from her inventory and drew out a large spell circle on the wooden floor. Or at least that's what she attempted to do. Much to her professional irritation, the end product ended up looking more like a spell oval than a circle thanks to her unsteady child hand. Luckily, the spell array she had in mind was not a very complicated one so she figured the error would not matter that much anyways.

Just to be safe though, she did inscribe a dozen containment and flame suppression runes around it's perimeter.

After checking to make sure everything was drawn out properly (or at least as properly as she could manage), she sat down cross-legged in the middle of the spell circle/oval and activated it.

To her relief, the array did not blow up in her face as a soothing glow of light blue energy surrounded her.

"At least something's going my way today," she muttered before closing her eyes and focusing on absorbing the energy.

Out of all the alternative forms of energy she had used in the future, she had concluded that the the most accessible and safest to use in her current state would be Spirit Energy AKA the residual energy produced by all living things. It was potent, plentiful, and, most importantly, able to be stored within her own body rather than her share crystal so that Ram would not accidentally tap into it and blow the entire continent up. The only issue with it though was its frustratingly long collection time. The spell array she was using helped to speed this process along but she figured it would still take at least a hundred plus hours to collect even a tenth of the reserves she had as an adult. Luckily, she now knew what her deadline was so she was not overly worried. As long as she managed to sneak away at regular intervals throughout the year to gather more energy, she was sure she would have a large enough reserve to handily one-shot the Deity of Sin and then some.

"Just killing her would be too easy once I'm back in fighting condition though," Rom mused. "Maybe I should tie _her_ up in some cables and have her displayed in the Basilicom courtyard as decoration. Heh, that would be-."

"WHOA! What are you doing Rom?!"

Rom jolted in surprise at her twin's unexpected shout. Unfortunately, her magic oval did not react well to the sudden shift in her mental state as its faulty structure immediately began overloading. This in turn ended up setting off all the Spirit Energy that was currently around her as it promptly exploded.

The good news was that the emergency runes worked as intended and prevented the entire Basilicom from going up in flames.

The bad news was that Rom ended up being buried alive underneath a small mountain of flame-retardant foam.

To her credit, Ram at least had the decency to look slightly guilty about this as she gave a nervous laugh.

"Um... oops? Heh heh..."

The only response she got was an angry pair of eyes glaring at her from within the pink foam.


	3. Shadow of War

***Just to avoid confusion: There's a time gap of a few days between each scene transition in this chapter.**

* * *

 **Ch 3: Shadow of War**

 _One and a half years before Rom's arrival..._

In an abandoned factory district in South Lastation, a lone ASIC grunt was seen sprinting through the dark alleyways with a terrified look on his face. Far behind him, the sounds of frantic gunfire and screams echoed out into the night sky as his foolish partners who had decided to stand their ground against their assailant were picked off one by one. In just a few minutes, the last desperate sounds of resistance faded away altogether leaving behind only an eerie silence in the desolate landscape.

The fleeing grunt barely paid any attention to this though as he focused solely on getting himself to safety. Turning another corner without incident, he began to feel a faint flutter of hope that he would actually-

" _And where do you think you're going?"_

That was all the warning the grunt got before a thin metal wire seemed to appear out of thin air and tightly wrapped around his left leg. The next thing he knew, he was being violently yanked feet-first into the air as he screamed the entire way.

Luckily for him, the nightmarish ascent only lasted for a couple seconds before he came to a rather abrupt halt.

Unluckily for him, he now found himself in the precarious position of dangling several hundred feet in the sky next to the edge of a nearby factory rooftop.

As the pale-faced grunt desperately tried not to look down, the odd distorted-sounding voice from before spoke up again.

" _Enjoying the view?"_

Being careful not to move around too much, the grunt carefully turned his head towards the rooftop next to him. To his mounting confusion and fear, however, all he found there was an odd shimmer in the air as if some ghostly being was standing in front of him.

"Who... What are you?!" the grunt could not help but blurt out.

The ghostly shimmer did not answer but seemed to move ever so slightly. The next thing the grunt knew, the wire holding him up suddenly slackened causing him to plummet back down towards the ground with a loud scream. Just before he ended up becoming a smear on the pavement below, the wire tightened up again and stopped his fall. Not giving the poor grunt a chance to recover, the mysterious being yanked him back up to the rooftop edge like a human yo-yo.

" _I'll be the one asking the questions around here,"_ the mysterious voice said, its static-laced tone sounding vaguely amused. _"You got that?"_

The ASIC grunt could only let out a pitiful whimper to this as he tried not to pass out from his near-death experience. Fortunately for him, his captor seemed to pass off his weak response as an affirmative.

" _Glad we got that covered. Now then..."_

All traces of its previous levity disappeared from the ghostly being's demeanor as its shimmering form appeared to lean in closer towards the terrified grunt. With a menacing aura that seemed to physically darken the space around them, the nightmarish being asked a single question in a deadly whisper.

" _Where's Brave?"_

* * *

"Hmmm..."

The self-proclaimed robot general known as Affimojas had a contemplative air about him as he read through the letter in his hand. Next to him, his best friend and right-hand robot Steamax was busy reading over his shoulder while clutching the large envelope that had come with the letter.

"What do you make of this General?" Steamax eventually asked once he finished reading. "Can we really believe what is written here?"

After a moment of thought, Affimojas turned his gaze towards the envelope Steamax was holding.

"Check inside Steamax. Let us see what this 'incentive' written in the letter is about. Perhaps it shall show us just how genuine this proposal is."

With a nod, Steamax quickly opened up the envelope and pulled out its contents.

"It... appears to be a bunch of official documents for the job mentioned in the letter," the robot ninja reported. "I suppose this proves the offer's authenticity but I don't see how... oh wait. There's also a check here for... a MILLION CREDITS?!"

Affimojas immediately perked up at the mention of the large amount of money as well but quickly managed to get a hold of himself.

"C... Calm yourself Steamax! We must not act rashly on this matter! Though I admit that this is indeed a fine incentive, it would still be wise for us to think this matter through."

"General, you cannot seriously be considering turning down this offer?!" Steamax voiced incredulously. "With this check and the promised salary, we could finally afford to move away from this place!"

To highlight this, he gestured towards the cramped, rundown apartment flat that the two of them were currently living in.

Affimojas almost seemed to be swayed by this point – especially when their crazy cat lady neighbor began her daily singing practice with her pets – but ended up maintaining his doubtful stance.

"You must see the big picture here Steamax. As tempting as this offer is, taking on this job would also put us in direct opposition with the ASIC. While I am fine with reporting about their illicit activities to get more views for my blog, I do not wish to actively pick a side in this fight and antagonize them."

"But General... the money," Steamax practically whined.

Affimojas simply gave an amused laugh to this as he gave his pal a good-natured pat on the shoulder.

"Worry not my dear friend! I predict we shall soon be making even more money than anything offered here. The number of views for my blog has been growing quite rapidly lately and in a few more years I imagine we shall be practically rolling in ad-revenue money! In fact, we will probably have enough to buy ourselves a mansion as well as an aerial battleship! Actually, make that _two_ aerial battleships!"

This finally seemed to convince Steamax though he still let out a small sigh.

"I suppose you're right General. It would be foolish for us to risk ourselves in this conflict just for some quick cash." Saying that, he looked back down at the job application forms that he was holding up. "Still, I am rather curious as to how they managed to find out about us and why we were picked to... Hm? It appears there was something else beneath these forms. It's... oh... oh my..."

"What is it Steamax? What is... oh..."

The cause for both robots' stunned reaction became obvious as Steamax held up a large limited-edition photo of Vert in a bunny outfit. At the top corner of the photo, a small handwritten note was paper-clipped to it reading:

 _There's a lot more where this came from. Just in case you're interested._

For a while, the only thing that could be heard was the cat chorus going on next door. Eventually, Affimojas turned to Steamax with a solemn air about him.

"Steamax?"

"Yes General?"

"Pack your things. We leave for the Lastation Basilicom immediately."

* * *

K-Sha was on the verge of having a full-on nervous breakdown as she paced about inside her dormitory room.

Up to this point, the Order (the shadowy mercenary organization that K-Sha belonged to) had been sending her on frequent raiding ops to steal valuable government assets while the Basilicom was currently distracted by the ASIC. Countless weapons, tactical information, and Credits had been pilfered with no sign of the Order stopping anytime soon. Or so it had seemed.

After calling K-Sha up on a near-daily basis, the entire organization had gone completely silent for over a week. This by itself would not have caused K-Sha much concern as she was used to being told to be on standby for long periods of time. No, what really got to her was that the last message she had received was to prepare for an upcoming mission the next day.

However, no contact had been established on the designated day. Or the day after that. Or the one following that either. All the way up to this very moment where K-Sha was waiting around desperately for an order that did not seem to be coming.

Having told the school she was attending that her (fake) medical condition was acting up again, K-Sha had locked herself in her room as she tried to figure out what to do. Normally, she tried not to think too much about her life as an Order member other than simply getting her assigned missions done but now she was starting to wonder if something had happened to her superiors. It seemed almost impossible that an external force could have attacked them considering how well-hidden they were so that left only the possibility that this was an internal matter. However, even that seemed rather unlikely seeing as how the head woman in charge had personally gotten K-Sha to assassinate all of her potential rivals from the get-go.

Wracked with indecision, K-Sha once again wondered if she should head over towards one of the Order's secret bases to see what was going on. This was, of course, completely against protocol and would most likely end up with her being severely punished but it seemed better than being trapped in her own uncertainty like this.

After agonizing about this decision for a few more minutes, K-Sha finally decided to risk it and find out what was going on for herself.

Just as she was about to head out the door, however, her phone let out a chime notifying her of a new message.

Pulling out her phone faster than the normal human eye could see, K-Sha opened it up and read its contents.

 ** _Congrats on your promotion. Hope you do a better job than your predecessor did._**

Confused, K-Sha clicked on the attachment that came with the message. While the document that opened up initially seemed to filled with only random gibberish and strange symbols, K-Sha quickly realized it was written using one of the Order's secret ciphers and mentally started to decode it.

"Wha-?"

Bizarrely enough, the message ended up being a notice to all Order operatives that K-Sha had been instated as the new leader of the organization. While it would have been easy to simply disregard this ridiculous news as some sort of hoax or low-level security breach, the message also happened to bear the encoded signature that identified it as being sent directly from the Order's central HQ.

Understandably, K-Sha found herself completely baffled by all of this as she tried to figure out what exactly was going on. Before she could reach any sort of conclusion, however, her phone chimed up again as a new message showed itself.

 ** _Three days from now at noon. Coffee shop across the street from the Lastation Basilicom. I'm a bit busy at the moment so I'll answer all of your questions then._**

K-Sha barely managed to read through the last line when another message popped up.

 ** _Actually, I think I'd prefer some crepes. Yeah, let's change the meet-up location to the crepe shop on the corner of Vita St. and Ratchet Ave. It's next to the bookstore with the funny alpaca poster on it._**

This message too was quickly followed by another a mere five seconds later.

 ** _Oh yeah. Almost forgot. You don't have to worry about your new position for the time being. I've got a friend of mine to handle things there until we meet up so enjoy some time off. Ciao._**

K-Sha read through the unsigned chain of messages a dozen more times before silently putting away her phone with an uncertain look. After a lenghty pause, she shook her head and walked out the door towards her school's infirmary.

"I guess I need to get back on my antipsychotics again..."

* * *

"Hey boss? You think this place will be safe?"

CFW Brave did not immediately reply to his generic henchman as he continued to silently inspect the expansive Arfoire chip factory from his upper viewing platform.

Being the ASIC's main base of operations in Lastation, the massive underground complex looked more like a highly sophisticated laboratory rather than the usual ramshackle production lines scattered throughout the region. As expected of such a high-profile location, the entire complex was filled with countless ASIC workers and machinery; not to mention the numerous armed guards and automated turrets that kept watch over the entire place.

"I see no reason to worry," Brave eventually told the underlings gathered behind him. "The recent loss of our outlying factories are indeed troublesome but I highly doubt whoever attacked them will know the location of this base. And even if they did, they would be no match for our defenses."

"I dunno boss," Generic Henchman #568 said. "It's not just those burned-down factories. There's been a lot of talk about some of our members just vanishing into thin air as well."

"Dude I heard about that too!" Generic Henchman #643 chimed in. "Rumor has it that some sort of evil spirit is dragging people into the shadows and eating them!"

"Holy shit, you real? Maybe that's what happened to everyone at those factories as well! I mean, we didn't find any bodies there so maybe-"

"Enough," Brave cut off, instantly silencing his peons. "It is pointless to worry yourselves over mere rumors and speculations. By my reckoning, these recent attacks are likely nothing more than the work of that meddlesome Oracle and her Basilicom forces."

"Um... that's the other thing boss," Generic Henchman #249 spoke up. "No one's seen the Oracle for several weeks. She used to make a public announcement every other day after the CPUs were captured but now she's nowhere to be seen. Even weirder is that the Basilicom closed itself to the public around the same time she stopped appearing."

"No way," #643 said nervously. "Do you think they were also attacked by whatever's after us?"

Brave was just about to refute this ridiculous notion when all of the factory's lights suddenly went out.

"AAAHHH! It's the evil spirit!" #568's frightened voice shouted out into the surrounding darkness. "It's come to eat us all! Run for your-"

"Silence!"

After making sure his underlings weren't going to start a panicked riot, Brave calmly activated his built-in communicator to call the factory's power division.

"Report. What's the situation down there?"

" _We don't know sir!"_ the head technician replied in a flustered tone. _"Everything just shut down all of a sudden! Even the emergency generators aren't-"_

The call abruptly ended at that point with the sharp hiss of static.

"What's going on boss?" #249 asked. "Are we-"

"AAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Brave and his underlings immediately cast their eyes down as someone on the work floor below let out a scream. Unfortunately, the surrounding darkness prevented them from seeing anything more than a flurry of frantic movements.

"What was that?!"

"Are we under attack?!"

"Over there! Shoot it!"

The area quickly erupted into absolute chaos as the panicked workers ran about blindly for the exits while the guards began firing at something that Brave and his henchmen could not see from their position. However, it quickly became apparent that whatever was attacking them vastly outmatched the scattered guards as even more screams and the sound of numerous bodies hitting the floor echoed out in quick succession.

"What in Arfoire's name is attacking us?!" #568 cried out in a panic, pulling out his own pistol with a terrified look.

Next to him, #643 pulled out a metal charm shaped like a pirate ship and began chanting desperately.

"Arfoire protect us. Arfoire protect us. Arfoire-"

His prayers were cut short when he and the rest of the henchman suddenly flinched as if they had been hit by something. The next instant, the entire group fell to the ground in a motionless heap.

The rest of the humans quickly met the same fate as the last remaining guards and workers were swiftly taken out leaving behind only the sound of collapsing bodies in the now-quiet factory.

" _You know, for someone of your size, you're a very hard robot to find."_

Befitting his name, Brave did not display an ounce of fear as he calmly looked around for where the mechanically-distorted voice had come from.

"Hm. I assume you have some sort of business with me?"

Rather than an answer, the sound of someone landing several feet away from Brave was heard. Quickly turning around, Brave was rather surprised to find an odd ghostly shimmer floating in the air before him.

" _Course I have business with you,"_ the voice said. _"Why else would I have gone through all this trouble of making sure we could have a private chat? Though I have to say, I'm rather surprised you didn't do anything to help out your... underlings."_

Brave mentally noted the strange amusement the voice attached to that last word before replying in his same even tone.

"Only a fool would charge in blindly against an unseen and unknown foe. However..."

In the blink of an eye, Brave pulled out his gigantic sword from his inventory and took on a fighting stance.

"Now that you've so graciously presented yourself before me, I shall make sure to avenge all of my followers' deaths!"

Moving far faster than his bulk suggested, Brave rushed forward against his foe and brought down his massive blade...

…only for a large _0_ to appear in the air as his sword harmlessly bounced off its intended target.

"What?!"

As Brave quickly retreated back into a defensive position, the ghost let out a small laugh.

" _Alright, calm down there big guy. There's no need to get so melodramatic. All of your underlings are still alive and fine. I've only knocked them out for the time being."_

Still keeping his guard up, Brave quickly took a glance down at his nearby fallen henchmen. To his surprise, he found that the ghost was telling the truth as all of his men had simply been taken out with small tranquilizer darts and were visibly still breathing.

Hiding his rising confusion, Brave turned back to the ghost and pointed his sword at it.

"Who are you? And what is your purpose here?"

The ghost did not immediately answer as its shimmering form seemed to shift ever so slightly. After a lengthy pause, it spoke up again in a much more serious tone.

" _I want you confirm something for me first. Is your goal to bring joy to all the children of Gamindustri?"_

Brave was rather caught off-guard by the ghost's knowledge of his main motivation but quickly recovered. Thoroughly intrigued by all this and hoping to gain some answers in return, he opted to reply.

"Yes. Though I do not know how you came upon this information, I am indeed working with the ASIC for the sake of the children. Using these Arfoire chips, I will make sure that no child will ever feel the sadness or resentment of being unable to play the games they want ever again!"

The ghost remained oddly silent at this as if it were contemplating something very deeply. After a long bout of silence, the ghost shifted ever so slightly again before speaking up. However, it's voice now sounded a lot more feminine and human than before.

"Looks like I get my second chance after all."

Oddly enough, Brave noted a large amount of both relief and regret conveyed in those words.

Before he could think too much about this though, the shimmer in the air moved again slightly before it suddenly seemed to expand. As Brave held up his sword and watched cautiously, the shimmer began to coalesce into a more solid form as a strange sound like a large electrical surge echoed from it. In a few seconds, the semi-transparent cloak disappeared entirely leaving behind a short human form standing half-hidden in the shadows.

"I guess it's a bit late to say this but... hello Brave. It's been a while."

Brave mostly ignored this strange greeting as he instead tried to figure out who exactly he was looking at. Though his enhanced vision allowed him to barely make out the person's face, he still had a hard time figuring out the identity of the vaguely familiar-looking person. A few moments later though, he finally managed to pull up a match from his internal database and outwardly expressed his surprise.

"You-!"

Hearing this, the girl let out a small laugh.

"Heh. Took you long enough to recognize me. Did my new look put you off?"

Once again, Brave ignored the comment as he instead settled back into his calm demeanor.

"I see. I suppose this answers quite a few questions then."

Taking on a more aggressive stance, he pointed his sword at the intruder once again.

"I assume you're here to try and kill me then, CPU Candidate Uni?"

Contrary to Brave's expectations, Uni - who's form was still mostly hidden in the shadows - shook her head.

"Hell no. I'm not going to repeat that mistake twice."

Brave was understandably confused by this bizarre response but kept up his guard and pressed on.

"Then what exactly are you here for?"

At this, Uni's veiled face seemed to give a faint smile.

In a move that left Brave thoroughly baffled, she extended out her hand towards him.

"I want you to join me Brave. Join me... in creating a new world order."


	4. Hidden Ram in Four Nations

**Ch 4: Hidden Ram in Four Nations**

 _'Huh, that's funny. I could've sworn I went to sleep in my bed.'_

Ram was mildly confused upon waking up from her nap to find herself slumped over a large wooden desk instead. Not only that, she also realized that she was inside what appeared to be the Lowee library rather than her own room.

 _'Meh, whatever,'_ she mentally passed off with a loud yawn. _'Wouldn't be the first time I accidentally teleported myself in my sleep.'_

As she straightened up to stretch her stiff neck, she happened to catch sight of her reflection in a nearby window.

"Oh, guess I ended up in the past," she casually remarked, not even batting an eye at the sight of her much younger body. "Either that or I somehow managed to get shrunken back down to my adorable fun-size again."

The truth about her situation soon became clear when she took notice of her left arm.

 _'Ah. Definitely the past.'_

After inspecting her hand for a bit and flexing it experimentally, Ram gave a shrug.

"Feels a lot smaller than usual. Then again, I guess everything's smaller about me at the moment. Heh heh." Lowering her hand, Ram shifted her focus back towards her surroundings. "Well, first things first. Time to figure out what era I'm in. Now, if my intuitions are correct, there should be some handy exposition material lying somewhere around... Aha! Score!"

Picking up the newspaper lying underneath a nearby picture book, Ram swiftly skimmed through the major articles.

"Let's see... the ASIC... blah blah blah... missing CPUS... awww man. This time period again? I wanted something a bit more fun like the Flaming Flamingo Crusades. Bah. Looks like I'll just have to spice things up on my own then. Speaking of which..."

Putting down the newspaper, Ram concentrated on herself to take stock of her current powers. A glowing pink aura surrounded her in response to this before she quickly dispelled it with a thoughtful frown.

"Hmm... Looks like only my memories and soul got transferred back this time around. Guess that means all I have to work with for now are my basic ice spells and soul-bound abilities. Man, talk about boring."

After a brief moment to ponder her options, Ram got out of her seat and gave a large stretch.

"Well, looks like I'll have to go out and recollect all of my power-ups again. Shouldn't take more than a few days if I head out now and- oh, wait." She lowered her arms as she suddenly remembered something. "I should probably leave a note for the Rom and Mina of this timeline. Wouldn't want them to worry too much about my sudden disappearance after all."

With a mischievous grin on her face, Ram rummaged through her inventory for a bit before pulling out a sheet of paper and crayon. After quickly scrawling out a short message, she dusted off her hands with a satisfied nod.

"There. That outta explain everything. Heh heh heh."

And with that final laugh, Ram casually snapped her fingers and instantly disappeared in a flash of pink.

* * *

 _'Ugh. Eight damn months and I'm still only at twenty percent of my old power reserves.'_

In her isolated corner of the library, Rom heaved a frustrated sigh as she finished collecting her daily supply of Spirit Energy and got up from her magic circle (which only slightly resembled an elongated oval now).

Ignoring the cramp in her legs that had developed from sitting down for so long, the chronologically-displaced CPU summoned up a small ice crystal in her right hand and stared at it intently. After a few seconds, the ice shard magically morphed into an extremely detailed sculpture of a fat penguin carrying a large hammer.

 _'Hmph. At least my control is back to somewhat usable levels,'_ she assessed, dissipating her little art project as she clenched her hand. _'I suppose I should thank Mina for that.'_

As it were, figuring out a way to get her nanny to give her some more advanced training exercises had been a rather difficult task for Rom. Having decided to avoid radically altering the past until she was satisfied with her combat prowess, she had trouble coming up with a plausible excuse for her sudden interest in training up her spell control.

Ironically, it had been Ram who had solved the issue for her. Thanks to the younger twin's complaints to Mina about Rom spending more time in the library lately rather than playing with her, the Oracle had come to the mistaken conclusion that Rom was devoting herself to her studies in order to get stronger and help out Blanc. When Mina confronted her about this, Rom had exploited this misunderstanding for all it was worth and managed to puppy-dog eyes Mina into giving her some additional training sessions without raising any serious suspicions against her.

 _'Still wish she would just skip the lecture parts of our lessons though,'_ Rom mentally complained. _'It's annoying having to waste time hearing about outdated theorems and formulas.'_

She gave a grumble as she remembered the close call just the other night when she had almost blurted out a correction to Mina's lecture.

 _'Seriously, how in the Netherworld did the scholars of this time period not know the proper algorithm for a triangular sealing array? Fucking morons had to be blind to miss the obvious sequence gap in the Nayru formula.'_

After colorfully expressing her professional irritation at the inadequacies of the time's magical sciences, Rom erased the spell circle on the floor with a wave of her hand and began to head on back out to the library's main hall.

As she rounded one of the bookshelves containing a book about gremlins, Rom suddenly paused with a worried look.

"Ram's been quiet. Too quiet."

This was ample cause for worry as there was no way Ram would have normally left her alone for so long.

While Rom had done a good job of fooling Ram into believing that her energy-collecting sessions were merely a magical meditation exercise (something that Ram had quickly decided was "boring" and wanted nothing to do with), this did not stop the younger twin from continuously trying to pester her into playing with her. Not wanting a repeat of the explosive, foam-covered disaster of the first day, Rom had been forced to get her hands on a large collection of toys, games, coloring books, and other childish entertainment to use on her hyperactive sister whenever she came looking for her in the library. Thankfully, most of these distractions worked as intended and managed to divert Ram's attention long enough for Rom to focus on her task unhindered.

However, today's distraction had only been a large picture book about magical explosions which, at best, would have kept Ram busy for about ten minutes. In addition, Rom had decided she was falling behind on her schedule and had risked spending at least a good hour more than usual gathering up extra Spirit Energy. The fact that Ram had not come to bother her during that time definitely meant that something was up.

 _'Maybe she fell asleep while reading?'_ Rom guessed hopefully. A quick second later though, her head fell down with a forlorn sigh. _'Oh, who am I kidding? She probably got bored and decided to set fire to the historical texts or something.'_

Forcing herself to continue walking, Rom apprehensively made her way around the final corner towards the main hall.

To her extreme surprise, however, she found that the place had not been transformed into a lava-filled hellscape like she had been dreading. In fact, the place looked so peaceful that Rom immediately noticed that something was amiss.

"Where's Ram?"

The reading tables where the pink-hatted twin had last been seen was conspicuously empty as Rom began to feel a growing sense of panic. Not for her sister, mind, but rather for the safety of the rest of the Basilicom and possibly the rest of Lowee.

 _'Oh shit. Please don't tell me she decided to sneak into the item museum again. If she gets her hands on a Blue Shell and Power Star like in my timeline...'_

Rom was just about to bolt out of the library in order to prevent the potential apocalypse when she happened to take notice of an out-of-place sheet of paper on one of the desks. Figuring it might be a note that Ram left behind, Rom quickly made her way over to it.

"Bwah-!"

... or at least, she tried to before tripping over herself and falling face flat onto the floor.

Swearing up a storm that would have made even Blanc blush, Rom once again picked herself off from the ground. Pausing just long enough to give her still unwieldy child legs a hateful glare, she carefully made her way over to the piece of paper and snatched it up.

What she found on it though did little to improve her mood.

"Wha-?"

In a messy, uneven scribble that could barely qualify as human hand-writing - written in pink crayon no less - was a short message that simply read:

 **Gone 2 save teh world. Bee back in few dayz.**

The only other thing on the paper was a drawing of a crude smiley face with its tongue sticking out.

Rom stood frozen in place for several long minutes as her poor academic mind tried to recover from the unholy mess it had just been forced to read. After several reboots, her brain finally managed to function enough to tell her that she needed to go out and stop Ram. Though the part about saving the world had been horribly unspecific, it was not hard imagining Ram doing something extremely stupid like trying to take on the Deity of Sin by herself.

 _'But why would she do something like this so suddenly?'_ Rom asked herself in confusion.

She quickly arrived at a potential answer when her eyes fell on the picture book lying on the desk. Looking closer, she saw that it was the same book that she had given to Ram as a distraction earlier that day. And considering it was all about magical explosions...

"Oh fuck me!" Rom shouted out as she realized what had most likely happened. "Did that brain-dead moron seriously just read about a new explosion spell and decide to take on the Deity of Sin with it?!"

It was an utterly ridiculous notion to be sure but definitely something that an impulsive child like Ram would do. In fact, Rom had personally seen Ram trying to sneak out and destroy an ASIC factory after learning a new ice spell several months ago. Luckily, Mina had happened to catch the errant child before she managed to get out the Basilicom gates and proceeded to give her the second-biggest scolding that Rom had ever witnessed. Unfortunately – and a bit surprisingly - it seemed the terrifying experience had not been enough to teach Ram her lesson.

With a glower fierce enough to melt a Metal Dogoo, Rom reluctantly utilized some of the precious Spirit Energy she had spent so long gathering to cast a high-level tracking spell.

 _'I hope Mina spanks Ram to next Sunday after I find and drag her back here.'_

With a deep breath to calm herself, Rom closed her eyes and focused on the Lowee share crystal. Her intention was to home in on Ram's soul presence in the crystal and use that as a basis for her tracking spell. However, her plans were completely derailed when she encountered an unexpected and rather shocking problem.

"What the fuck?!"

Rom's earlier anger was quickly replaced with confusion and worry when she found that Ram's soul had somehow been... altered.

In all honesty, the abnormality was kind of hard for Rom to describe. The best way she could put it was that a massive block of static was floating about where Ram's soul had used to be. Strangely enough though, Rom could still vaguely sense snatches of the all-too-familiar presence of Ram's obnoxiously vibrant soul from within this undecipherable static. However, a closer inspection revealed that the static wasn't covering up Ram's presence like Rom initially thought but rather that Ram's soul had somehow been intertwined with this anomaly at the base level. And as if all this wasn't enough to already send Rom's baffled mind in a whirl, the static-like anomaly somehow appeared to exist within the Lowee share crystal but was completely detached from the normal flow of share energy.

Even with her vast amount of knowledge and experience, Rom found herself at a complete loss as she stood frozen in shock. Try as she might, she simply could not bring up anything that could potentially explain the bizarre anomaly she was currently sensing in place of her sister.

"I need to find her," Rom finally said, her confused daze being broken by a growing sense of concern and anxiety. "I need to find her fast and see what happened to her."

Focusing once more on the anomaly, Rom activated her tracking spell hoping that it would work as intended. To her dismay, however, the spell immediately fizzled out as a mental error message popped up in her head telling her that the target was unidentifiable.

"Damn it. You never make things easy for me, do you?"

Undeterred, Rom once again homed in on the anomaly but this time tried to isolate Ram's presence from the rest of the static. This was easier said than done though due to just how interwoven the two soul presences were. In a way, it was a lot like looking through a large bucket of pink paint and trying to pick out the individual red pigments mixed in with the white.

After several minutes of intense concentration and effort, Rom eventually managed to isolate a usable fragment of Ram's soul from the rest of the anomaly. In the process, the analytic part of her mind also noted with a small amount of relief that the none-Ram parts of the bizarre soul presence was devoid of anything dark or malicious. If anything, this other half seemed relatively dormant asides from giving off a hint of something that felt strangely like exasperated cynicism.

Deciding she could question all this after she had confirmed the safety of her sister, Rom instead closed her eyes and cast her tracking spell once more. After what felt like forever to her, a large map of Gamindustri popped into her mind as the spell began its working process.

"Come on." In her mind, a bright dot appeared to zoom around the expansive map of Gamindustri as it scanned for its target. "This better- Yes!"

Rom opened her eyes and let out a cheer in spite of herself as the cognitive dot finally locked onto a location with a satisfying ping. Her relief and joy were short-lived, however, when she focused her attention and realized where exactly the dot had landed on.

"Wait, Planeptune? That can't be right."

Despite her words, the dot identifying Ram's location continued to solidly hover over the south-western shores of Planeptune.

Deciding she must have screwed up the spell somehow, Rom gathered up her energy again to try recasting it when the dot abruptly disappeared of its own accord. Before she had so much time as to blink, the dot reappeared but this time in the central part of Leanbox instead.

"What the flying fuck?"

As she closed her eyes again and mentally stared in confusion, the dot remained blinking in Leanbox for several seconds before disappearing once more. When it became visible again, it now showed Ram to be somewhere in the northern mountains of Lowee.

"Okay, this has to be some kind of mistake on my part... right?"

The words had hardly left her mouth before the dot teleported once again.

Deciding her spell had to be faulty, Rom spent the next several minutes dispelling and recasting her tracking spell at least a dozen times in the hopes that the bizarre occurrence would correct itself.

Unfortunately for her, it did not.

No matter how many times she refreshed her spell, the results always showed the same thing. Someway, somehow, Ram was apparently hopping across one end of Gamindustri to the next as if playing some nonsensical game of international leap-frog.

In the end, Rom was forced to sit down and simply continue observing the situation in the hopes that Ram would eventually settle down in one location long enough for her to make a move.

Much to Rom's chagrin, it took nearly an hour and a half for this to finally happen and by then she was almost fit to burst with frustration and concern.

"About damn time! You better not fucking move again or I'm going to feed you to the Chain Chomps!"

The threat probably had nothing to do with it but the dot thankfully remained unmoving even though nearly five minutes had passed since it had first arrived at its current location.

Quickly getting up from the chair she had been sitting at, Rom made her way out the library doors as she prepared to fly on over towards the area highlighted by the tracking spell's marker.

"Well, I'm glad it's not too far away but why did she have to stop in Lastation of all places?"

As it were, the marker happened to be pointing at a location just a few miles past the south-eastern Lowee/Lastation border. Rom figured it would only take a few minutes for her to fly there with the aid of a Haste spell but that was not the main issue at hand.

For some reason or another, Lastation had completely closed off its borders from the rest of the world just two months after Rom had arrived in the past. Everything from trade to information had been completely blocked off as Lastation had become even more of an isolated island than Leanbox was. Of course, Rom had no idea if such a thing had happened in her own timeline or not but had eventually written it off as just another short-term tactic by Kei to slow down the ASIC. Figuring the borders would be open again by the time of her old adventure like she remembered, Rom had stopped paying any attention to it.

Now though, she wished she had kept more up-to-date with the news as it appeared that she would need to illegally cross the border in order to find her wayward sister.

"It'll be fine," Rom tried to convince herself. "I doubt there would be that many guards patrolling the border when they're all busy dealing with the ASIC. Besides, even if we do get caught, I doubt it'd cause much of a problem. Kei's a reasonable person and I definitely wouldn't mind seeing Uni again."

With a firm nod, Rom continued sneaking her way down the Basilicom halls. After safely making it all the way outside, she quickly activated her HDD, cast a high-level Haste spell on herself, and rocketed into the skies before anyone could stop her.

As the freezing cold air whipped across her face, Rom once again felt her frustration and annoyance towards her twin surface.

 _'I'm going to kill Ram as soon as I get my hands on her. Well, after I wring some answers out of her first. But after that, it's going to be nothing but happy, fun-times between me, her, and some power tools.'_

Radiating an aura cold enough to cause the nearby clouds to begin dropping a torrent of hail on the unfortunate citizens below, Rom sped off towards the horizon and quickly disappeared from view.


	5. Hollow Ataraxia

**Did I just make an update that didn't take several months? Yeah, this is definitely a sign of the apocalypse alright. Hope all of you manage to at least enjoy this chapter before the world is drowned in pudding and sucked into a black hole or something. :P**

* * *

 **Ch 5: Hollow Ataraxia**

 _It was an empty void of nothingness and yet also the bastion of all life. Shrouded in impenetrable darkness but also illuminated by the brightest of light. A place where every second was as long as the never-ending span of eternity. A realm that did not 'exist' so much as it simply 'was'._

 _It was here that she now resided. Without any conscious thought and with only the tiniest notion of her own self being, she simply drifted in this place of impossibility with no physical form to call her own. A dreamless sleep that she was somehow vaguely aware of. And yet, despite all this, there was still one single thing that she could manage to comprehend._

 _Peace. She was at peace. A blessed sense of calm contentment that would have caused her to smile if she had any form to call her own._

 _Just like always and never, she continued to drift about without any thought or worry as she simply basked in her hard-earned sojourn._

 _All that came to a swift end though as a powerful force suddenly seemed to wrench her from her rest. In an instant, her sense of self returned as the emotions that defined her past existence flashed before her. Joy, hope, indecision, shock, pain, regret, guilt, determination, love, worry, anguish, grief, resignation. She felt all these and more before they were all blended together into an incomprehensible mess and swiftly absorbed back into her reformed self. Not only that, a tidal wave of memories flooded into her mind at the same time; both from her first life as well as from the countless others she had experienced thereafter. Most would have been driven mad by this massive influx of information but to her it was simply par for the course. Instead, she simply used her newly reforged thought process to make a nonchalant observation._

 _'The summoning feels a lot weaker than usual...'_

 _She quickly dismissed the thought as inconsequential though when she felt the force from before tugging at her once again. With a disembodied sigh, she allowed herself to be pulled towards her next target._

 _Her only hope as she began her descent back to the mortal realm was that things would not be quite so messy as her last job._

* * *

If anyone had happened to be crossing by the Gamindustri Graveyard where the CPUs were imprisoned at that moment, they would have been met with a rather shocking sight.

For the first time in nearly three years, Nepgear's HDD suddenly turned off as she reverted back to her human form. This oddity, however, was rather negligible compared to the reaction of the slowly stirring CPU Candidate herself.

Blinking open her eyes with the same resigned sluggishness of an office worker waking up for their job, Nepgear blearily took in her surroundings for a brief second before letting out a large yawn. As she did so, she casually ripped free of the thick cables that had been restraining her as if they were nothing more than wet tissue paper to her. Landing on her feet with surprising ease, she began to perform a few stretches without any change in her neutral expression.

"Oof. I think this new body has a few kinks in it. The last time I felt this stiff was back when I was actually alive." Her casual air as she said this gave the impression of someone simply performing morning exercises at the park rather than in the middle of an ominous graveyard filled with doom and despair.

As she continued on with her stretches, she cast her eyes about her surroundings with an air of relaxed boredom. Even when her gaze passed over the captive forms of the CPUs - including her own sister - there was no reaction from her at all as she seemed to regard them as nothing more than part of the scenery. In fact, the only thing that seemed to catch her attention at all was the large tower standing at the center of the graveyard. Or more specifically, the large mass of evil energy that was slumbering within.

With a final set of leg stretches, Nepgear finally turned to focus on the dark tower with a flat look.

"Really. The Deity of Sin. Again. I'm fairly certain this has to be the forty billionth time I got called in because of her." She shook her head with a world-weary sigh. "It doesn't matter. A job's a job. All I need to worry about is taking out the trash as usual."

With another sigh, she extended out her hand to her side.

"At least I got my wish for a clean mission. Too bad it's also going to be so completely and utterly dull."

A mass of dark purple energy suddenly began to converge towards Nepgear's outstretched hand as she said this. In a matter of seconds, the energy solidified into a familiar and terrifying form.

The sickly, violet-colored blade appeared first followed closely by its dark purple hilt and handle. A malevolent aura of hunger and despair powerful enough to overshadow even the oppressive atmosphere of the Gamindustri Graveyard immediately began to radiate from it as it fully materialized into the physical world.

Indeed, the weapon was none other than the infamous bane of the CPUs: the Cursed Sword Gehaburn.

Shockingly, Nepgear seemed completely unaffected by the sword's all-consuming negative energy as she casually grabbed it with both hands and aimed it at the ground. With one final sigh, she raised the cursed sword above her head before plunging it down towards-

"Wait, what?"

Nepgear halted mid-action with the tip of the blade a mere centimeter off the ground. With a confused look on her face, she slowly raised the sword back up before looking directly at it.

"What do you mean something's off?"

As bizarre as it was, the CPU Candidate seemed to be talking to none other than her own sword. To make matters even weirder, Nepgear began nodding her head a bit as if the inanimate object was somehow responding back to her. This strange exchange continued on for a minute before Nepgear looked down at herself with a surprised look.

"What the goodness?! You're right! This really is a physical body!"

She then spent the next few seconds looking over herself as if she had never seen anything quite like it. The real kicker though came when she suddenly used the Gehaburn to slice open her own palm without any hesitation.

"Amazing!" she breathed out, seemingly not feeling any pain from the deep and bloody gash. "An actual flesh and blood body! It's been so long since I've been in one!"

Surprisingly, the cut immediately healed itself up the moment Nepgear turned her eyes back to her sword.

"But why though? I was always given a body made purely of mana for all of my other missions. Why would the boss suddenly give me a physical body like this for no apparent reason?"

Once again, Nepgear became silent as she appeared to listen to her sword's answer.

"Wait, the boss didn't send me here?! But that's impossible! She's the only one who has the power and authority to summon me! I mean, I did notice that the power that dragged me here felt a bit different than usual but that still doesn't explain how-"

Nepgear paused as if the Gehaburn had interrupted her. All of a sudden, she gave a sheepish laugh.

"Oh, right. Still thinking like a mortal. Heh heh. Alright, give me a few seconds to find out what's going on."

Nepgear closed her eyes as she seemed to intensely concentrate on something. A moment later, a stunning surge of power seemed to flare up around her whole being. It only lasted for an instant – a mere millisecond really - but at that moment, it was undeniable that Nepgear had access to a power capable of creating and destroying entire universes at a mere whim.

As this omnipotent power swiftly disappeared, Nepgear opened her eyes again with a small smile.

"I see. So that's what happened. To think that she would be able to... Heh heh. Well, it's definitely interesting to say the least."

She looked back down at the Gehaburn for a second before answering it.

"Yes, I also contacted the boss. She said we could stay here for now. I mean... the boss never really talks so it was kind of hard to tell but she hasn't dragged us away yet so I guess that means we can stick around... right?"

Whatever the Gehaburn said in response caused her to give a slight huff.

"Hey, no need to be mean. If you keep this up, I'm going to leave you at the bottom of the ocean again."

Apparently satisfied with the response she got, she looked back out towards the horizon.

"Gosh, I never thought I'd get a vacation like this though. I wonder what I should do?"

She looked back down at the Gehaburn a moment later with a disapproving look.

"No, I'm not going to kill everyone and feed them to you. You eat all the time when we're working and honestly, you're starting to put on a bit of extra weight. I think this vacation is a good time for you to go on a bit of a diet."

Right at that moment, the duo's seemingly one-sided conversation was rudely interrupted by a rather loud arrival.

"GAH! Bored! I'm so bored! There's nothing to kill here and- Huh? Hey, wait! What are _you_ doing over there?! You're supposed to be hanging off those cables with the rest of those loser bitches!"

Casting an off-hand glance to her side, Nepgear saw the gargantuan robot menace known as CFW Judge storming towards her. Rather than moving to confront him, however, she simply regarded him like most people would a passing car before turning back to her sword.

"Look," she said sternly, continuing on with their previous conversation as if a giant murder robot wasn't mere meters away. "You can make all the excuses you want but I'm the one who has to carry you around all the time. If I say you need to go on a diet, you are _going_ to go on a diet."

CFW Judge surprisingly did not seem to care about being ignored (like most villains tended to do) as he instead brought out his over-sized halberd to bear with undisguised relish.

"Ha ha ha! Perfect! Just perfect! I was looking for something to tear apart! I know Magic told me not to kill you but I'm sure she won't mind me slicing off a leg or two!"

With startling speed, he rushed across the remaining distance separating him from his target as he swung down his massive weapon. The speed and direction of his attack should have ensured that his prey could not dodge at all. And yet... he somehow found his weapon striking nothing but empty air regardless.

"Huh? What? How did-?"

"You'll live," Nepgear's voice said from his far right. "Anyways, can we just get back to figuring out what we're really going to do for the rest of our vacation?"

Swiftly turning around, Judge was confused as all hell to find the girl standing several meters away while still talking animatedly with her sword.

"Oi! How the fuck did you get over there?!"

Once again, Nepgear disregarded him completely as she instead brought up her free hand to her chin.

"Hmmm... I suppose I could always try my hand at knitting. I don't think I've ever gotten into that before. Or maybe mountain sculpting. I never did get to finish that carving of Shin Nepgeardam V because _someone_ decided to obliterate the planet before I could put on the finishing touches."

Finally starting to get ticked off at being ignored, Judge raced forward and swung his halberd again.

"DIE!"

His second attempt went just as about as well as the first as Nepgear simply seemed to faze out from existence and reappear behind him.

"Oh, don't give me that," Nepgear continued on, completely oblivious to the massive wave of killing intent Judge was now radiating. "We only needed to get rid of that continent but _nooo._ You just had to stab yourself into that Lifestream reactor preemptively and blow everything up."

With an enraged yell, Judge swung about his weapon in a devastating circle. Unfortunately for him, the only thing he managed to hit was a nearby stack of discarded consoles.

As Nepgear casually reappeared in front of him yet again, he felt his already tenuous thread of patience and sanity snap.

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

With nothing but bloody murder on his mind, Judge flew at Nepgear in a berserker rage. The giant robot was more or less akin to a living hurricane as he stormed after his evasive target across the desolate landscape. Entire mountains of old consoles and electronics were turned to dust as he plowed through them with only madness in his eyes.

It was only three hour later, after he had hacked and cleaved his way across almost the entire length of the Gamindustri Graveyard, that he was finally forced to come to a halt from pure exhaustion.

And standing tauntingly in front of him - still bickering with her sword like an old married couple no less - stood the entirely untouched form of Nepgear.

"Yes, but waffles are way better at holding syrup than pancakes," she argued, the conversation having long since gone completely off the rails during Judge's rampage. "Plus, the crispy outside makes it so that it doesn't immediately get soggy like pancakes do."

"What... the fuck... are you?" Judge gasped out, too drained to really project the rage he was feeling.

To his surprise, Nepgear actually seemed to respond for once as she finally looked up from her weapon. However, her gaze did not fall on the out-of-breath robot but rather the north-eastern skies.

"Oh? It looks like some interesting people are gathering about."

With a small smile on her face, she looked back down towards the Gehaburn.

"Why don't we settle this debate later? I don't think either of us wants to miss this show."

The sword apparently 'spoke' to her again as her expression suddenly changed back into one of exasperation.

"No! How many times do I have to tell you that you're not-" The Gehaburn most likely said something again as Nepgear cut herself off with a large sigh. "Alright, fine. I'll let you have one little snack before we go. But after that it's nothing but plant monster souls for you."

There was another brief pause before Nepgear finally seemed to take notice of the giant, hulking robot that had been trying to kill her for the past several hours.

"What, that thing?" A faint hint of disgust crossed her face. "Ewww. That's nothing but junk food. I know it's close by but why don't you find something a bit more appetizing than _that_?"

Despite his exhaustion and the oddity of the conversation, Judge could not help but give out an indignant shout to this.

"Hey! Who are you calling junk food?!" A second ticked by before he quickly reconsidered his words. "Wait, I'm not food at all!"

Nepgear once again ignored him completely as she rolled her eyes at her sword.

"Do what you want then. Just don't throw up on me again when you get food poisoning from it."

Judge was just about to angrily interrupt the duo's 'conversation' when he suddenly felt... lighter. For some reason, he could no longer feel the heavy fatigue that had been weighing down on his body. In fact, he could not feel much of anything at all.

It was only as his vision suddenly tilted downwards that he saw the horrifying truth. In the span of a second, his entire body had somehow been sliced up into tiny metal chunks as his decapitated head fell towards the ground. His dying central processor barely had time to numbly process this fact before a faint noise that sounded ominously like laughter echoed in his head. The last thing Judge managed to notice was a sudden flash of sickly violet and a sharp burst of agonizing pain before everything faded to black.

With unnerving stillness, the Gehaburn continued to float about in the air of its own accord as Judge's impaled head, as well as the rest of his dismembered body, slowly dissipated into a mist of dark energy. Rather than being drawn back towards the Deity of Sin, however, the energy was forcibly sucked into the blade of the cursed sword instead. In a matter of seconds, all of Judge's essence was completely consumed as the Gehaburn seemed to glow a little brighter. Seemingly content with its grisly feast, the sword silently flew back to its master's waiting hand.

"Done now?" Nepgear asked, completely unfazed by her sword's brutal actions. Apparently receiving a response, she nodded. "Good. The show's just about to start and I want to get front row seats for it."

There was another brief pause before she gave a slight shrug.

"It's only temporary amusement while I think of something else for us to do. Of course, if none of the actors manage to sufficiently entertain me..."

A small, creepy smile appeared on her face causing the entire land to shudder as if Gamindustri itself was somehow shivering in fear.

Without another word or any sort of flashy indication, Nepgear simply blinked out of existence as if reality itself could no longer keep track of her. The only thing left behind was a lingering aura of blood and death that caused even the formless mass of energy that was the Deity of Sin to cringe away in primal fear.


	6. The Whereabouts of Madness

**Sorry about my long absence. I've just been busy dealing with a lot of real life stuff as per usual. I already promised to properly end my stories though so there's no need to worry about me abandoning them (properly being the key word here since too many authors think that abruptly killing all their characters is an acceptable ending (it's not)).**

 **Seeing how long it's been, here's a little cheat sheet on all our time-traveling CPU Candidates.**

 **Rom: Second CPU Candidate to arrive in the past. Hails from the canon timeline (or a very similar variation of it). Asides from being the Lowee CPU, she's also a magical scholar who's praised as a genius in her time period. Unfortunately, she's inherited Blanc's temper as well as her tendency to spew foul language when stressed. She also has a bit of a sadistic side to her, though this is _usually_ reserved for her enemies (callback to her attributes page in the manga). Despite this, she's still a relatively kind and thoughtful person. Her plan so far is to simply let history play out as intended with minimal intervention from herself. Her hope is that she'll eventually run into the person responsible for this mess and that she can _persuade_ them to send her back to her own time. Currently, however, she's busy chasing after Ram who has somehow teleported herself off to Lastation for some inexplicable reason.**

 **Uni: First CPU Candidate to arrive in the past. It's unknown what sort of timeline she's from but it's heavily implied that she's at least lived through some variation of the events of _V-II_. Numerous strange occurrences have been noticed in Lastation since her appearance. In truth, this was all due to Uni using her future knowledge to alter the past to her own liking. She has so far recruited Affimojas, Steamax, and K-Sha to her side. She was last seen confronting CFW Brave and offering him a place at her side in "creating a new world order."**

 **Ram: Third CPU Candidate to arrive in the past. A complete mystery as to what timeline she's from. She apparently has a lot of experience in being in weird situations. It's implied that she's lost her left arm sometime in the future. Her soul has also been fused together with an unknown being that Rom notes as being non-malevolent yet oddly cynical. It's been mentioned by Ram that this soul-bond is what allowed her to carry over several of her powers to the past; one of which happens to be instantaneous teleportation. Currently, she's out gathering "power-ups" from all across Gamindustri to help her "spice things up" in the past.**

 **Nepgear: The last of the CPU Candidate to arrive in the past. Comes from the infamous Conquest Ending. Little is known about her history following the tragic event other than her eventual death. However, her spirit continues to live on as she now works for an undisclosed omnipotent higher-being. Armed with the Gehaburn, her new job seems to entail destroying various different versions of Gamindustri across the multiverse, though the details about it remain unclear. Perhaps due to her line of work, her personality and morals have become rather twisted, albeit in a rather eccentric way. She enjoys having long conversations with the Gehaburn but it's hard to say whether the sword is actually sentient or if she's simply talking to herself. She knows the truth of the entire time-travel fiasco taking place but is willing to play along for amusement's sake. At the moment, she's taken notice of the other CPU Candidates and has headed off to spectate their inevitable clash (probably with a large bucket of popcorn in hand).**

* * *

 **Ch 6: The Whereabouts of Madness**

 _Okay, this is new._

Rom was currently hovering in the air in her HDD form as she inspected the enormous wall of energy that barred her path. Appearing almost completely transparent asides from a pale blue shimmer, the enormous barrier extended above the clouds and stretched on from one end of the horizon to the other.

 _Why is there a random energy shield in the middle of-_

Something suddenly clicked in her head as she checked the mental map of Gamindustri that her tracking spell provided. A quick look confirmed that she was indeed at the Lowee/Lastation border.

 _This can't be right_. _There was never any sort of barrier like this in my own past... was there?_

Once again, Rom could not tell if she was simply forgetting about the minor details of her past or if this really was a new development.

 _I … suppose it's not improbable that Kei sealed off the nation like this at one point,_ Rom theorized, trying to see if she could give this odd instance the benefit of the doubt. _Plus, this would explain the recent lack of news coming out of Lastation. Though of course, I don't remember if Lastation actually did cut itself off from the rest of the world in my past either so it's hard to judge anything based on that._

Her suspicions continued to grow though the longer she stared at the barrier. Asides from its dubious existence, something about the energy she sensed from it just seemed... off to her.

Deciding this warranted a closer investigation, Rom quickly flew down to the ground before dispelling her transformation. After straightening out her cherished muffin hat, she raised out her hand towards the energy barrier before casting a simple analysis spell.

 _Alright, checking its structure and basic- What the fuck?!_

Rom physically flinched in surprise as the results came flooding in.

 _What- How? This thing... it's nearly as strong as one of my minor shielding spells!_

Considering the fact that even her weakest magical shields could take the full brunt of a nuclear blast and remain unscathed, this was no small feat to emulate. In fact, the barrier's strength and durability was one that honestly should not- no, could not exist with any of the technology available to Lastation during this time period.

 _How is this possible? Did I do something to alter the timeline this much already? Or maybe... did someone else follow me into the past?!_

Rom could not help but feel a slight tinge of fear as she imagined one of her present day villains appearing in this timeline. Even the most pathetic of her enemies, such as Underling Jr. III, could pose a serious threat to the current world due to the massive power disparity between the past and present (she heavily blamed power creep for that). And with her own powers cut down to a fraction of its full strength, she was not sure if even she could stop them.

 _Okay, calm down,_ she mentally scolded herself. _There's no need to get yourself worked up over hypothetical scenarios._ _Besides, I haven't even finished analyzing its basic energy components yet. Figuring that out should probably clear up a few questions about its origins._

After taking a deep breath, Rom once again activated her analysis spell. Unfortunately, the results she got only served to increase her questions rather than answer them.

 _This doesn't make any sense!_ She unconsciously brought up a hand to her chin as she assumed her usual thinking pose. _This energy reading... it doesn't match anything found in Gamindustri, past or present. And yet... there's something strangely familiar about it. The problem is, I can't put my finger on exactly why or how._

She continued to ponder about this for a few more minutes before eventually giving a sigh.

 _As intriguing as all this is, I probably shouldn't waste anymore time here. There's no telling when Ram will teleport away from her current location._

Forcefully setting aside her curiosity, Rom instead turned her focus towards simply getting across the barrier.

 _Blasting through it is definitely out of the picture,_ she quickly surmised. _If it's even half as strong as my analysis spell indicates, the amount of force required to shatter it would probably garner the attention of the entire northern hemisphere of Gamindustri. No, I need a more subtler approach here._

After a bit of thought, she dug up a small pebble from the snow-covered ground before casting an intangibility charm on it. She then tossed the pebble forward only for it to solidly bounce off the shimmering blue barrier.

 _Damn. It looks like it's structure is too dense to slip through._ Despite the situation, Rom could not help but feel a tiny bit of scholarly respect for whoever or whatever had designed this thing. _Hmph. If one of my students at the university had submitted something like this for their midterm project, I would've definitely given it a passing grade._

Putting aside her admiration, Rom turned back to the issue at hand. Luckily, it did not take her long to come up with a solution.

 _Well, I suppose I'll just have to do as Ram did and teleport myself across._

In all honesty though, Rom was not particularly thrilled with this idea. Though not as difficult to grasp as time or reality, manipulating space required a ridiculous amount of control and focus to safely utilize (one of the many reasons she found Ram's sudden mastery of it to be utterly bizarre). Teleportation in particular was one of those deceptively simple-looking spells that could easily end up going wrong in a large number of bloody and horrific ways. Rom herself had witnessed one-too-many of her students botch up a teleportation spell and accidentally end up inside active volcanoes or displace several of their body parts.

 _Ugh. I really hope I don't end up leaving behind an arm and leg like that one kid from the alchemy department..._

With that unpleasant memory in mind, Rom took extra care while constructing her spell. After double-checking every last detail for nearly a minute, she finally took a deep breath before activating it.

There was a brief unsettling sensation of vertigo before Rom quickly found herself on solid ground once again. Taking a quick look around, she found to her relief that she was on the other side of the barrier with all of her limbs still intact.

"Whew. Looks like all that spell control training with Mina paid off," Rom remarked, a small smile on her face. "Alright, now that that's taken care of, it's finally time to go capture my idiot sister."

Feeling just a tad bit less annoyed than usual, Rom activated her HDD and flew off once again.

* * *

"According to the tracking spell, Ram should be somewhere around... here."

Rom looked down expectantly only to find no sign of the rambunctious pink troublemaker in the wide-open snowy field below her. What she did find, however, was a completely different pink-colored object.

"What in the-? Is that... an anchor?"

Despite all logical sense, a large metal anchor – like the sort typically found on ships - was lying conspicuously against the white background. Even stranger though was the fact that it was glowing with a soft pink light.

Confused as all hell, Rom dropped down next to this severely out-of-place object. After turning off her transformation and taking a closer look, she noticed that the anchor was not the only oddity around. Right next to the glowing slab of metal was a strange distortion hanging in the air. It was barely visible but a large section of space seemed to be rippling slightly as if some semi-transparent curtain was gently swaying in the breeze.

Having spent most of her life in the presence of Neptune (and later on Nepgear), Rom immediately recognized the telltale signs of a recently opened dimensional rift.

"It must've been an extremely powerful rift to have created a spatial imprint this large," Rom deduced. Assuming her thinking pose again, she took a closer look at the nearby snow. "Looks like it must've been closed off rather quickly though seeing as how the surrounding area seems relatively unaffected."

Of course, Rom didn't have to be a genius to guess who the most likely culprit of this dimensional rift was. The fact that her tracking spell was pinging the exact location where the distortion was only made it even more obvious.

"Well, I suppose she did suddenly learn how to teleport across the entire world," Rom muttered, crossing her arms as she said this. "I guess it isn't completely impossible that the little shit somehow gained the power to open up portals to different dimensions as well."

She gave a large frown though as her eyes strayed over towards the glowing pink anchor lying on the ground next to the spatial distortion.

"I still have no idea what this thing is supposed to be though. Ram clearly left it here but why did she-"

Rom suddenly facepalmed as the obvious truth dawned on her.

"You've got to be kidding me..."

The object in front of her was, more than likely, a dimensional anchor. If Ram did in fact leave for another dimension, it would make sense for her to secure a way for her to return back home. Of course, most dimensional travelers would have simply chosen a nearby rock or tree as their anchor rather than a... well, literal anchor.

"Leave it to Ram to make a stupid pun even when she's not here," Rom groaned. "Ugh. Why do I get the feeling that one of her earlier stops was just to pick this thing up?"

It took a while for Rom to get over her exasperation but she eventually settled back into her thoughtful pose.

Despite having no clue as to where Ram was at the moment, she now knew where her twin would return to. All she had to do now was to lie in wait before ambushing her wayward sister when she inevitably showed up.

"Still, I have to wonder what sort of dimension she's in right now for my tracking spell to still register her as being in Gamindustri," she mused. "Maybe some sort of dimension that somehow overlaps with ours?" She entertained this notion for a bit before discarding it with a shake of her head. "No, that's impossible. If another dimension existed that close to ours, then Neptune would have definitely ended up there by accident ages ago."

Deciding the matter was unimportant for the time being, Rom instead turned off her tracking spell to conserve energy before taking a seat on the ground.

"Well, at least my search is finally over," she sighed in relief. "Now I just need to wait for the moron to arrive."

With that, she crossed her arms and waited.

...And waited.

...And waited some more.

…

"I really wish I brought a book," Rom sighed after several long minutes of nothing.

Deciding she might as well get comfortable, Rom got up and projected a large cushy lounge chair for herself.

"Much better," she said, sitting back on her new magical creation with a satisfied smile.

And thus her waiting began once more...

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Rom had ditched her chair as she was busy painting out a complicated runic array around Ram's anchor.

"...and that should do it for the paralysis rune." Raising her large paintbrush, Rom looked down at her handiwork with a scrutinizing gaze. "Hmm... acceptable. Certainly not perfect but it's a lot better than what I expected from my clumsy child hands." She gave a satisfied nod before quickly realizing that she now had nothing else to do until Ram appeared and triggered her trap.

"Well... I suppose I can add in another layer of effect while I'm waiting."

Several seconds passed by as she pondered what to add before an ominous smile appeared on her face.

"Oh, yes. I think I got just the thing."

With a sinister giggle, she began painting out a modified flame suppression rune.

* * *

Half an hour later, Rom stood up from her completed runic array as she vanished her paintbrush and dusted off her hands.

"Okay... now what?"

* * *

"...and checkmate."

The clone of herself that Rom had created to play chess with suddenly began crying as Rom (the real one) looked on in disbelief.

"Oh for- it's just a game!" she shouted in exasperation. "There's no need to cry over something like this! Great goddesses, was I really this much of a crybaby as a kid?!"

This only made the clone cry harder as Rom began to feel a strange sense of guilt as if she had just kicked a small puppy. Not knowing how to deal with the situation, the real Rom simply snapped her fingers causing the crying clone to disappear.

"Ugh. Note to self: Clones take on their caster's physical age rather than their mental one." Her eyes wandered over towards the conjured chessboard as she gave a large sigh. "Also they make terrible chess partners."

* * *

Rom was completely motionless as she stared intently at the rock in her hand. After several long, unblinking seconds, the rock suddenly morphed into a large rice ball.

After closely examining it from every single angle, she cautiously took a bite out of it. A look of confusion quickly followed though as she looked back down at her transfigured food.

 _...why does it taste like a jelly doughnut?_

* * *

Rom brushed aside the excess snow as she finished building her extremely detailed snow Dogoo.

After looking it over and giving an almost weary nod, she moved on to gather up a fresh batch of snow for her eighty-fifth Dogoo.

* * *

"AHAHAHAHA! YES! COWER BEFORE ME!"

Laughing maniacally, Rom hurled another fireball at the fleeing snow Dogoos that she had charmed to life.

* * *

 _Huh. So that's what happens when you add an extra pentagram to a demonic summoning circle._

Rom stored this information away in her mind while casually setting fire to the Eldritch abomination in front of her.

* * *

"A hundred bottles of rum on the wall. A hundred bottles of rum..."

* * *

"It won't be long now," Rom muttered, absentmindedly making a snow-angel on the ground. "Ram's gonna show up any second now. Yup. Any second now..."

* * *

"AHHHHHHHHH! HOW MUCH LONGER IS THAT IDIOT GOING TO TAKE?!"

Rom finally cracked as she crushed the living ice-cream cone she had just created.

"I've had it! If she doesn't want to come back, then she can stay in her stupid alternate dimension forever!"

Rom raised her hand as a massive ball of energy gathered before her. Just as she was about to hurl it at the magic anchor, her rational side managed to break through to her.

 _Calm down! Leaving Ram stranded isn't going to help anyone! Besides, you need her to return if you want to personally strangle her!_

The madness slowly faded from Rom's eyes as the large ball of energy dissipated. Breathing heavily, she forced herself into a meditative exercise she had learned from Blanc to help control her temper. After several long minutes, she finally looked back up and gave a weary sigh.

"I never expected boredom to be my greatest enemy in this time period," Rom muttered tiredly. "Ugh. I just wish something interesting would-"

Her words were cut short when a distant boom suddenly echoed out from the distance.

Swiftly turning around, Rom managed to spot a far-off flash of light before another similar boom sounded out once more.

"Is that artillery fire?" Rom questioned aloud. "But why would there be-"

She immediately shut herself up as she realized she had just gotten her wish. Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, she eagerly activated her HDD as she prepared to go take a closer look. However, she paused to look back at the anchor once more.

 _It'll be fine,_ she told herself. _Even if Ram chooses to show up while I'm gone, the runes will keep her from going anywhere._

Just to be safe though, she cast a notification spell that would immediately alert her if Ram reappeared.

Satisfied with her precautions, Rom quickly zoomed off towards the distant artillery fire with perhaps a bit too gleeful of a smile.


	7. Brave New World

**Ch 7: Brave New World**

"What in Blanc's name...?"

As Rom looked down at the scene before her, she wondered if she perhaps should have been more specific when asking for something interesting to happen. Not to say that what she was currently looking at was not interesting. After all, very few people would have found a full-scale battle raging before them to be dull.

The sheer chaos and destruction being wrought upon the snowy plains was something that would not have looked out of place from the great Console Wars of old. To the west, an endless horde of monsters spilled out from the distant forest and barreled across the open battlefield. On the opposite end were a group of humans dug into a series of long-running trenches as they fired everything from rifles to artillery to anti-air guns to prevent the monsters from overwhelming them. And several miles behind these defenders was a large town that appeared to be in the process of evacuating its citizens in multiple airships.

Rom, of course, had been sensible enough to immediately cast an invisibility spell on herself the moment she had gotten within vision-range of this massive battle. With her presence safely concealed, she risked flying closer to examine the conflict in more detail. Hovering just above the reaches of the airborne monsters and the anti-air guns that the defenders were shooting them down with, Rom magically enhanced her vision and surveyed the battle in full.

One of the first things she immediately noticed were the groups of villainous thugs that were charging towards the defenders alongside the monsters.

 _So the ASIC is the one responsible for this attack,_ Rom concluded with a frown. _I suppose that shouldn't be all that surprising considering this time period but still..._

As she observed the ASIC thugs charging across the no man's land though, she picked up an odd sense of desperation coming from them. Based on the few ASIC thugs she had encountered in her own past (really just Underling and Warechu), she would have expected the villains to display some form of perverse sadistic glee while attacking a town like this. In contrast, however, the thugs she now saw were fighting more like cornered animals as if their very lives depended upon taking control of the town.

 _What's so important about this town? I don't remember there being anything important all the way out-_

Rom's musings about the ASIC's motives were cut short when she looked over at the defensive trenches. Or more specifically, the soldiers protecting said trenches.

 _The fuck?!_

Mowing down the swarms of monster and ASIC thugs with their rifles (and Rom had to blink her eyes and recast her vision enhancement spell multiple times to make sure she was seeing this correctly) was also a group of ASIC thugs. Or at least, that's what they looked like. The men and women were all clad in stereotypical ripped leather outfits, spiked collars, and sporting various punk hairstyles that were identical to their invading counterparts. The only difference though was that the ones in the trenches were all wearing matching black headbands.

As if this was not confusing enough, the headband-wearing thugs were working side-by-side with a bunch of uniformed Lastation soldiers as well. And judging by their ease of presence around each other, it appeared that the two groups were quite used to working together. In fact, Rom actually saw one of the thugs gun down an approaching Pixelvader before sharing a fist-bump with the soldier next to him.

 _...okay, I knew that rice ball tasted funny,_ Rom thought numbly. _I'm probably just hallucinating due to some really bad food poisoning and-_

Her thoughts were interrupted when a cacophony of loud howls suddenly broke through the battlefield. Turning her head, Rom saw a trio of Fenrir boss monsters appear out of the forest. With bloodlust gleaming in their eyes, the enormous wolves charged towards the trenches with unbridled ferocity.

The defenders were quick to respond as all of their artillery were turned to focus on this new threat. As Rom watched, two of the Fenrirs were quickly blasted to pieces by the concentrated firestorm. However, the third one managed to run through the explosions relatively unscathed as it rapidly approached the nearest trench line. The defenders inside desperately fired every last bullet they had at the enormous beast but found themselves barely making a dent in the oncoming monster's HP. With a savage roar, the Fenrir leaped into the air as it pounced upon its helpless group of prey.

Just as Rom was about to step in and discretely blow the monster up, a large shape suddenly charged in from behind the trench-lines. As this newcomer intercepted the beast with a giant flaming sword, Rom felt her mouth drop open in surprise as she recognized the large robot figure.

 _What in the-?! Is that... CFW Brave?!_

Despite the sheer absurdity of it all, there was no mistaking the identity of the large knightly robot. And as bizarre as it all was, he was clearly aiding the defenders in protecting the town from the forces of the ASIC.

"Alright, what the flying fuck is going on here?!" Luckily, the din of the battlefield managed to hide Rom's outburst as she continued on in an incredulous rant. "Why is there a battle taking place here? Why are there ASIC thugs fighting on both sides? _And why the fucking hell is Brave protecting a town from the ASIC?!_ "

Sadly, no answers were forthcoming as the battle simply continued to rage down below. By the time Rom finally managed to calm herself and look back down, Brave had already dispatched the Fenrir as all that remained of the beast was a rapidly fading cloud of black data fragments. Seeing one of the uniformed soldiers climb out of the trench to approach the robot, Rom quickly cast a specialized eavesdropping spell that allowed her to focus in on the two while muting out the deafening sounds of battle that continued around them.

"General Brave!" the Lastation soldier saluted. Rom, of course, felt another confused migraine pop up at this but forcefully suppressed it as she instead focused in on the conversation. "Thank you for the assistance sir! I'm assuming from your presence here that the evacuations are complete?"

Brave casually cut down a group of approaching monsters before giving a curt nod.

"The last of the airships have just left. All we need to do now is eliminate these invaders."

Saying this, Brave turned his eyes towards the distant forest where the monsters were spawning from.

"Has the enemy shown any signs of slowing down?" he asked.

The soldier shook his head to this with a troubled look. "No, sir. Those damn extremists must be using some sort of upgraded monster-spawning discs. It doesn't seem like they'll be running out of power anytime soon."

Rom did not get a chance to process any of this before Brave spoke up again.

"I see. Then I shall endeavor to remove the problem at its source."

The soldier looked shocked at this proclamation as he quickly shook his head. "General, I must ask you to reconsider! Even with your power, it's far too dangerous for you to charge in alone! At least allow some of us to..."

His words trailed off when Brave turned to face him with a resolute air.

"You and your men have already performed your duties admirably. It would shame me to ask you to do any more without stepping foot on the battlefield myself."

The soldier seemed to sense his superior's resolve in those words as the rest of his protests died out. After a moment the soldier slowly gave a nod as he gazed at Brave with clear respect in his eyes.

"Then we shall continue to hold the line until your task is complete, General." Snapping to attention, the soldier gave a sharp salute. "For the glory of the Empire!"

"For the glory of the Empire," Brave repeated with a firm nod.

As the soldier retreated back to the trenches to relay his orders, Brave turned back to the battlefield with his sword held high. After taking a moment to apparently steel himself, he valiantly charged forward against the hordes of monsters standing between him and the distant treeline.

And far off in the sky, still hidden from view thanks to her invisibility spell, the extremely confused future CPU of Lowee followed suit in the faint hopes of gaining some answers.

* * *

"Stand aside knaves!"

Despite the unending swarm of enemies that approached him, Brave had little trouble slicing through them all thanks to his recently upgraded body. The enhanced servos and motors he now had provided him with enough power and speed to make the vicious army of monsters feel more like a defenseless field of wheat before his devastating strikes.

 _Hm. I suppose I should thank Steamax for persuading me to take on these new parts._

Brave had initially been rather leery at the prospect of letting the engineers tinker around with his body but his fellow robot had eventually won him over with the reasoning that an upgraded body was going to be of more use on their missions than his stubbornness. And based on the battle right now, Brave had to admit that Steamax had actually been on point for once.

 _Perhaps I shall deign to look the other way the next time I find him peeking into the ladies' bath again. Of course, K-Sha will probably catch him regardless but it's the thought that-_

"YOU!"

Brave was rudely brought out of his thoughts as one of the extremist thugs appeared before him with a look of pure hatred on his face. With an enraged yell, the thug brought up his rifle and opened fire against him.

Of course, none of the bullets managed to even dent his armored frame as Brave wordlessly charged forward. The thug did not even get a chance to react before he was instantly cleaved in two. Luckily, there was very minimal blood (due to meta rating reasons) as the bisected thug simply dispersed into a cloud of data fragments like a regular monster.

As the last visible remnants of the thug disappeared, Brave could not help but pause as he felt a slight tinge of regret. He knew that these extremists were no more than lawless terrorists but it still grieved him to cut down his former subordinates. Knowing his inner turmoil over this, many of his new comrades had offered to aid him on this mission but he had obstinately refused them all. Even if these ASIC extremists were no longer associated with him, he still felt that it was his responsibility to personally put an end to their destructive ways.

 _And put an end to them I shall,_ Brave affirmed with a grim nod.

Tightening his grip on his sword, he charged forward with a renewed sense of conviction. Both monsters and extremists alike were cut down with brutal efficiency as Brave showed absolutely no mercy to his enemies. The snowy battlefield soon became obscured by the continuous cloud of dispersing data fragments as nothing seemed to be able to slow down his relentless advance.

As Brave neared the treeline, however, there was a sudden change in the enemies' movement. The hordes of monsters still continued their mindless charge against him but the remaining extremists instead retreated into the northern section of the forest. A few of them stayed at the edges of the treeline however as if taunting him to chase after them.

Seeing this, Brave briefly paused to consider his options. It was painfully obvious from their behavior that the extremists were trying to lure him away from the monster-spawning discs and into some sort of trap. While he was confident he could deal with anything the extremists threw at him, chasing after them would mean leaving the hordes of monsters unchecked. His men were most likely exhausted and running low on ammo at this point making him unsure if they could hold out long enough for him to dispatch all of the extremists and then double back to take out the discs. On the other hand, if he went after the discs first, the extremists were certain to use that opportunity to slip away. Considering the time and effort in had taken to force these criminals out into the open like this, simply letting them escape was out of the question.

After intensely debating this for several long seconds (all the while continuing to dispatch wave after wave of attacking monsters), Brave let out a large sigh. As much as it hurt his pride – and wallet - to do so, it seemed he had no choice but to ask for help.

With a quick mental command, he activated his built-in communicator. Less than a second later, his call was picked up by a smug female voice.

" _Isn't it a bit soon for you to be reporting your success?"_

Brave simply answered with an irritated grunt. To his dismay, this only seemed to further amuse his contact as she let out a loud laugh.

" _Ha! I told you you'd need some back-up for this one. Looks like I won our bet after all."_

"Can we please just get to the matter at hand?" Brave growled, trying to mask his embarrassment with a large dose of annoyance.

" _Sure, sure. But man, everyone's gonna be super thrilled to learn that you're going to be treating us to BBQ later tonight. Oh, and just FYI, God Eater's probably gonna be_ real _hungry seeing as how she missed lunch today."_

Brave inwardly cringed as he could practically feel his entire personal savings evaporate into nothingness.

"Ugh. I shall make sure to honor our deal later but right now there's a situation that needs to be dealt with."

An amused snort was heard across the line but it seemed he was finally being taken seriously.

" _Heh. Alright, what do you need big guy?"_

* * *

Within the depths of the forest, the leader of the ASIC extremist faction waited impatiently for his target to appear. He and his remaining forces were currently hidden behind the nearby trees as they stared intently at the clearing that they had set their trap in. According to their scouts, their target had taken the bait and was well on his way towards the designated area.

As time wore on and the tension around the clearing grew, the leader could not help but brush his hand against his giant mohawk nervously. Even if their trap worked, they would still be left in a very bad spot. Their raid against the border town had been utterly foiled due to the unexpected presence of the Empire's forces meaning that his group was now dangerously low on supplies. Even if they managed to get away, it was doubtful they could survive another week with what they had left. Their only option now was to hope that their current plan would cause enough chaos in the Empire to allow them to sneak into another nearby border town and steal whatever supplies they could find.

The leader's thoughts were interrupted when the sound of approaching footsteps was suddenly heard. He and his men immediately tensed as they sunk further into the shadows with their guns at the ready. Soon enough, the unmistakable visage of their most hated enemy slowly came into view.

CFW Brave, or rather just Brave as he was now known, stepped into the clearing with an oddly calm air about him. He still held his sword in his right hand but other than that he seemed completely at ease despite being in hostile territory. In fact, he seemed entirely oblivious to the surrounding danger as he foolishly stepped right into the middle of the clearing with no hesitation.

As soon as he did so, a wide circle of energy emitters suddenly popped out of the ground before instantly generating a large glowing dome around Brave. The robot knight did not get a chance to react at all before he was completely sealed inside the impenetrable energy barrier.

Seeing this, the extremist leader could not help but give a crooked grin as he slowly stepped out from the shadows to make himself known.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't our traitorous former commander." As he said this, his men cautiously came out of hiding as well though they made sure to keep their weapons fixed on Brave. Feeling confident in his victory, the extremist leader walked closer to his captive with a gloating smile. "I have to say, it's rather fitting for a dog like you to be trapped in a cage."

Despite his predicament, Brave seemed strangely nonchalant as he did not even attempt to break out of his confinement and instead remained utterly motionless.

"What is it you seek to accomplish here?" he questioned instead. "If you're planning to use me as a bargaining chip, then you shall be sorely disappointed. The Empire does not negotiate with terrorists."

The extremist leader's smile widened as he waggled a patronizing finger at Brave.

"Oh, no no no. You've got it all wrong. We're not planning to use you as a hostage. We're going to use you as an example." Saying this, he pulled out a small device that looked like a remote bomb detonator. "You're currently standing on top of enough explosives to wipe out half a city," he explained. "All I have to do is press this trigger and you'll be nothing more than a pile of molten scrap metal. I'm sure that'll send a clear message to your beloved CPU bitch about-."

The leader barely had time to register a bright flash of red before Brave's sword suddenly swung down at his neck. Luckily for him, the energy barrier managed to repel the strike but the extremist leader still recoiled backwards with a frightened yelp.

"Watch your tongue cur," Brave warned, "or you shall find my next strike to not be so forgiving."

The extremist leader tried his best to hide his fear with a laugh as he turned to face his men.

"Ha... L... Looks like the CPU has really trained her dog well."

The thugs all gave a laugh at this though there was an unmistakable air of nervousness still lingering about them. Hoping to regain control of the situation, the leader cleared his throat and walked back up to Brave.

"You can act tough all you want but it's not going to change the fact that you're going to die here." A sadistic smile appeared on his face as he slowly regained his cocky composure. "Don't worry though. All those other traitors who sided with the Empire will be joining you as well. Here, I even had a camera set up so you could watch them all be torn apart by our monsters."

With villainous glee, he activated a large holographic screen that showed the battle taking place outside. Even from the distant view provided by the camera, it was clear that Brave's forces were on the brink of collapse. All of the artillery were silent as they had most likely run out of shells as the defenders desperately tried to hold back the tidal wave of monsters with only their sidearms and bayonets. To make matters worse, a large group of gigantic boss monsters appeared out of the forest right then and began to make their way across the snowy plain.

"So much for the great Lastation Empire," the extremist leader jeered, eliciting a laugh from his men.

Brave, meanwhile, opted to remain silent as he simply continued to stare at the screen. Taking this lack of response as a sign of defeat, the leader gave a malicious grin.

"Their blood is on your hands, you know," he taunted. "If you hadn't lured them away with your traitorous words, none of them would've had to die here."

The leader did not wait for a reply as he triumphantly raised the detonator in his hand and hovered his thumb over the bright red trigger.

"Any last words before I send you to the scrap heap?" he asked mockingly.

To his surprise, Brave actually responded.

"Just two." A loud beep suddenly sounded out from Brave's head as his tone took on an amused edge. "Scan complete."

All of the extremists gathered gave a baffled look as their leader voiced their confusion.

"Scan? What scan?"

The question had hardly left his mouth before an earth-shaking sound akin to thunder suddenly echoed across the sky. Darkness immediately followed giving the impression that night had somehow descended early. Unable to discern the cause of this due to the surrounding trees, all of the extremists instead looked towards the screen showcasing the area outside the forest.

At first glance, it appeared as if someone had suddenly decided to replace the sky with an enormous metal ceiling dotted with countless house-sized turrets. It was only upon noticing the distant edges of this obstruction on the screen that the horrified extremists were able to realize that what they were actually staring at was the underside of an enormous aerial battleship. Of course, simply calling it enormous was a bit of an understatement as the titanic vessel was easily five times as long as the base of the Planeptune tower and was currently blotting out the entire sun. Even the monsters shown on the screen seemed to be taken aback as they all stopped to stare at the metallic behemoth that now loomed over them.

As everyone continued to stare open-mouthed at the colossal battleship, no one noticed the disembodied voice that suddenly whispered out from a nearby cluster of trees.

"Holy fuck."

* * *

"Successful warp-in to target location. Inputting coordinates sent by General Brave's scan now... Confirmed. All cannons locked onto the monster discs and remaining hostiles. We await your command Admiral."

At the forefront of the ship's bridge, Affimojas swept aside his cape as he gestured forward dramatically.

"Show these insurgents the full might of the _Imperius_! Commence bombardment!"

* * *

Armageddon. That was the only way Rom could describe the utter destruction taking place around her. A rain of fire on par with a fully-charged Meteor Storm spell descended upon the forest with explosive fury. She, of course, was perfectly safe thanks to the magical barrier that she had set up around herself but the ASIC extremists around her were not quite so lucky. Most of the villains did not even get a chance to scream before they were instantly vaporized by the firestorm raining down from above. The few that tried to dive out of the way were swallowed up by the explosions regardless as the entire forest seemed to transform into a gigantic fireball.

There was, however, one small area that was spared from this mass devastation. The small circle of land that Brave and the extremist leader were around went completely untouched as all of the cannon fire fell perfectly around them. Of course, this impressive display of pinpoint targeting went mostly ignored as Rom was more focused on Brave himself.

The robot knight had leaped into action the moment the ship had begun firing. Drawing his flaming sword back, Brave stored up his energy for a brief moment before unleashing a devastating strike. The barrier he was trapped in instantly shattered like glass as he confidently stepped out into the light of the surrounding explosions.

The extremist leader, meanwhile, had fallen flat on his ass – either from the force of the nearby explosions or just plain shock – and was in the process of picking himself up when he suddenly found Brave's sword (thankfully with its flames turned off) pointed directly at his throat.

"Sit," Brave commanded. Seeing the pompous thug obediently fall back to the ground with a terrified squeak, the normally stoic knight gave an amused snort. "Good boy. Now stay still until animal control arrives."

The bombardment came to an end soon after that as an eerie silence fell across the devastated landscape. By that point, very little of the forest remained as only a few charred stumps were left standing. The once-vibrant area had instead become a scorched and cratered wasteland as the massive ship responsible for it continued to loom ominously over them all.

 _Yeah... I think I've had my fill of crazy for the day._

Finally getting over her shock, Rom decided that she had long outstayed her welcome and prepared to activate her HDD. Before she could do so, however, her attention was hijacked by yet another mind-boggling sight.

 _Okay, I know I've already asked this a million times today but...what the fuck is going on here?!_

Flying down from the ship were what appeared to be three human soldiers equipped with a modified set of processor units. Each of them wore an identical pair of leg processors that resembled a black mechanized boot which seemed to have some sort of hover or propulsion system as evident by the glow underneath their soles. The two soldiers at the sides were also equipped with back processors that were shaped like a pair of elongated, black diamond wings. The soldier in the middle had a slightly more upgraded version as it had an additional pair of semi-transparent, crystalline wings below the first set. Regardless, even with just two processor units each, it seemed these humans were able to fly quite freely as they descended towards the ground in a controlled and stable manner.

As they neared, Rom was able to get a slightly better look at the three newcomers. The one on the left was more than likely a reformed ASIC thug as he sported a large nose and ear piercing despite having a military regulation haircut and uniform. The girl in the middle had short black hair and was most likely some high-ranking officer based on her upgraded processor unit as well as her stylish military jacket. The person on the right, however, was the one that drew in most of Rom's attention.

Despite looking several years younger than when Rom had first met her in her own timeline, the girl had to be none other than God Eater. The fact that the young Maker was wearing the exact same style of clothes as in the future made it fairly easy to discern her identity even without having to get a close look at her face. In fact, the only real difference that Rom could spot about the younger God Eater (asides from her processor units) was that she did not have the large, red bracelet that she normally wore over her right wrist.

Rom was still busy filing away God Eater's presence into the overcrowded section of her mind recently labeled as _'What the shit-fuckery is going on?!'_ when the three soldiers landed down and approached Brave.

"You alright boss?" the reformed thug immediately asked in a concerned voice.

Brave kept his eyes fixed on his prisoner but answered with a nod. "I'm fine, 643. But some of our comrades in the trenches might require medical attention. The battle has not been easy for them."

"Don't worry Mr. Brave," God Eater chirped up. "We've already got shuttles coming down from the _Imperius_ to pick them up." Her eyes suddenly lit up as her voice took on an excited tone. "By the way Mr. Brave, is it true you're going to be buying us BBQ later tonight?!"

Brave let out something that sounded suspiciously like a groan as he opted not to answer.

The girl in the middle let out an amused laugh to this and looked to say something when her attention was suddenly diverted. To Rom's surprise, the girl shifted her gaze directly towards her despite her invisibility spell still being on.

Too late Rom realized what had given her away. Due to her setting up a barrier to ward off the explosions earlier, the ground she was standing on was noticeably unmarked compared to the blackened wasteland that surrounded her. Brave had most likely not noticed due to being preoccupied with the ASIC extremist leader but it seemed this girl had not failed to miss this small yet significant detail.

Rom barely had time to create another barrier before the girl whipped out a pistol and fired at her. While the bullet was safely deflected, this had the unfortunate side-effect of fully alerting everyone to her presence as they all turned to face her location.

"Come on out. I've already locked onto your energy signature so there's no use trying to run."

Rom froze at this. Not because of what was said but because she recognized the voice. Sure it had been decades since she had heard it being as high-pitched as it was now but there was absolutely no mistaking it.

Without really thinking about it, Rom allowed her invisibility spell to drop. Everyone gathered showed varying degrees of shock as they slowly recognized her but their surprise was nothing compared to her own. With open-mouthed bewilderment, Rom pointed towards the black-haired girl that she was finally able to recognize.

"UNI?!"


	8. Goddess of War

**Ch 8: Goddess of War**

" _Heh heh. Looks like the stage is finally set. It sure took a while but the opening cast looks fairly- Hm? You're worried they might just talk things out? Oh phooey, that won't do at all. Everyone's going to be super disappointed and bored then. Hmmm... maybe we should step in a little just to ensure we get some quality entertainment. And no, that doesn't mean I'm letting you eat one of them."_

 _..._

" _Oh, quit your whining. Here, you can have some of my popcorn if you're really that hungry. Just make sure not to eat too much. You're still on a diet after all."_

* * *

Rom remained fixed in place as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Having finally taken a good look at her attacker's face, there was no denying that the girl standing before her was really Uni. However, the sheer amount of disparity between this younger Uni and the one from her own time period made it hard for Rom to fully accept this fact.

For one thing, their appearances were completely different. Sure there was the obvious age gap of about ten years between them (in terms of physical looks at least) but that was not the main point of contrast. Future Uni - Rom decided to just refer to her friend as this for simplicity's sake - had naturally adopted the trademark tsundere twintails and even wore an outfit that was fairly similar to what Noire had worn during her CPU days. This younger Uni, however, had cut her hair short just above her shoulders. Judging by its rough edges, Rom guessed that she had cut her hair with a knife and had never bothered to properly trim it. As for her clothes, she wore a white tank top that emphasized her chest, tight black shorts that barely covered her thighs, and an open black military jacket that she wore over her top. While the outfit definitely seemed more practical for combat than a dress, it was also a rather... bold choice of fashion that Rom was fairly certain Future Uni would be too embarrassed to put on outside of a cosplay event.

Speaking of, that was another major difference that Rom noticed between the two Unis. The Uni standing before her radiated an aura of cool confidence that was noticeable even as she stood looking confused. Future Uni, on the other hand, had never really gotten over her crippling flaw of always comparing herself to Noire. As a result, she still retained a bit of an inferiority complex even after decades of successfully leading Lastation as the new CPU. She still managed to put up a confident front around her citizens but Rom had always managed to pick up on the subtle hints of doubt that presented itself on her friend's features whenever they were in public. However, Rom could not detect even the slightest bit of this insecurity from the Uni she was currently facing. In fact, this Uni gave off such a self-assured and commanding presence that even Brave's imposing aura seemed to be dwarfed in comparison.

 _She almost reminds me of Future Ram with that cocky demeanor of hers,_ Rom thought. As she continued to stare at Uni, she found her eyes wandering towards the high-tech back and leg processor units that she had spotted on her earlier. _Also, why is she using those to fly around in her human form rather than just activating her HDD?_

She did not get the chance to properly ponder about this as Uni suddenly broke the silence that had fallen over the recently-scorched wasteland.

"Alright, who are you really?" Confusion still lingered on her face but it was now accompanied by a large amount of wariness as well. "And don't bother acting like you're the real Rom," she added, raising her pistol again to highlight her warning. "I know for a fact that she doesn't know how to cast a cloaking spell. Not to mention, she wouldn't have been able to get past the barrier I set up at the border to begin with."

Rom felt her eyes widening in surprise at this.

"Wait, you're the one who set up that-?"

A loud gunshot suddenly silenced her words. Judging by the lack of reaction from her magical barrier though, it was clear the bullet had been purposefully aimed away from her.

"Last warning," Uni stated, her tone taking on a cold edge. "Answer my question or the next shot will be between your eyes."

 _Hmph. Looks like impatience is another similarity she shares with Ram,_ Rom thought wryly.

Not wanting to escalate the situation any further though, Rom raised her hands as a gesture of peace.

"I'm not an enemy," she said calmly. "I really am Rom and-"

She never got the chance to finish as a giant icicle suddenly erupted out of the ground underneath Uni's feet. The Lastation CPU Candidate barely managed to leap out of the way and avoid being impaled as Rom realized with a large amount of shock that the attack was a copy of her very own Ice Coffin spell and even carried the same energy signature as hers. Even more strangely, she thought she heard a faint giggle echo out from her side despite seeing and sensing absolutely nothing there.

Unfortunately, she had little time to question either of these things as Uni landed back on her feet and opened fire with her pistol. All of the bullets were once again stopped by Rom's magical barrier though which caused Uni to quickly reevaluate her strategy and put away her low-caliber gun.

"So... that's the way you want to do things, huh?" Before Rom could say anything, Uni pulled out an odd catapult-like rocket launcher from her inventory and aimed it at her. "Fine then. Let's play."

Rom barely managed to gather her wits just as the football-shaped rocket was fired. Despite her barrier still being active, a sudden sense of foreboding came over her causing her to quickly gather up her Spirit Energy and fire off a large spear of ice. Listening to her instincts turned out to be a wise move as the intercepted rocket exploded several meters away from her but still produced a strong enough blast to put a visible crack on her barrier.

 _The fuck?! Where the hell did Uni get a weapon this powerful?!_

The thought had barely crossed her mind when a hailstorm of bullets suddenly tore through the fire and smoke and impacted against her shield. Unbelievably, these too managed to cause several tiny cracks to appear on her barrier forcing Rom to raise up her right hand and apply even more Spirit Energy to reinforce her shield.

 _How is this even possible?!_ she thought incredulously. _As far as I can tell, these are just regular bullets! How are they dealing this much damage without being enhanced by share energy?!_

She failed to come up with an answer as Uni continued to pin her in place with what she now saw was a large Gatling-style machine gun. Forcing herself to calm down, Rom took a deep breath and used this opportunity to analyze her situation.

It was clear to her that an unknown third party was purposefully trying to pit her against Uni but to what end she did not know. Regardless, this interloper had done a fine job in riling up the trigger-happy goddess leaving Rom with little choice but to either fight back or escape.

 _Fighting's definitely not an option here,_ Rom quickly decided. _I'd be playing directly into the hands of whoever contrived this entire mess. Not to mention, I have no idea just how strong this Uni is. Even Ram wouldn't be stupid enough to charge in blindly in a situation like this._ There was a brief pause before Rom immediately reconsidered that thought. _Okay, scratch that. Ram would definitely charge in blindly here. Of course, I don't have her asinine luck to bail me out once things inevitably go wrong so... yeah. I should probably just look for a way to get out of here._

This was easier said than done though thanks to the numerous obstacles that lay in her path.

 _So I just need to figure out a way to disable a giant battleship, distract all three of Uni's followers, and finally incapacitate Uni long enough to make my getaway. Oh, and let's not forget about her earlier mention about locking onto my energy signature. I don't know if she was bluffing or not but I should probably test that out before making any major moves._

Rom could not help but let out a sigh as she considered these difficult conditions.

 _Ugh... I miss the simpler days when the worst I had to worry about was what color I was going to graffiti Blanc's books with._

As she pulled herself out of her wistful thoughts, she suddenly became aware of another problem. Though it was just a guess, there was a strong possibility that the mysterious third party had caused this fight to spy on both her and Uni. If that was the case, then she needed to be careful not to reveal too much of her hand here or she would end up giving this hidden enemy a dangerous advantage.

 _Fucking dammit. It's just one thing after another._ Rom bit her lower lip in frustration and worry as she considered her situation. _Getting out of here is going to be difficult enough even without having to purposefully nerf myself. I can probably still do it but I'd feel a whole lot better if there was something I could use as a back-up plan or- Hm?_

Rom's gaze was suddenly drawn towards a small metallic item lying on the ground not too far from her.

 _...That could work._

With her strategic mind whirring into overdrive, Rom swiftly put together a plan.

* * *

Uni could not help but let out an irritated growl. Even after twelve continuous seconds of fire from her Heavy Minigun, the impostor Rom's barrier had refused to budge at all.

 _Well, there goes four hundred thousand Credits,_ Uni thought bitterly, thinking of all the custom-made bullets she had fired so far.

" _You need our help with this one commander?"_ 643 asked, his voice coming over the tiny communications device that they all had in their ears (excluding their robot members of course; they had a handy communications app installed into their hard drives instead).

" _Ooh! Let me help!"_ God Eater chimed in enthusiastically. _"I've been practicing my aim lately and I want to show how much I've improved!"_

Uni was very glad the younger girl could not see her face as she gave an involuntary wince. While the God Eater of the future had rivaled both herself and K-Sha in terms of marksmanship, the current God Eater had a hard time shooting the broadside of a barn... that was the size of Lastation... and was also at point-blank range.

"Er... it's fine you two," Uni said aloud, trying her best to repress the painful memory of their latest monster-hunting mission together. "I can handle this on my own."

" _Awwww,"_ God Eater whined. _"Come on U- I mean, commander! I even made a new modified bullet and everything!"_

"No, really it's fine," Uni replied, perhaps a tad bit too quickly.

" _She probably doesn't want you shooting down the_ Imperius _and bringing it down on top of us,"_ 643 said in a flat tone.

" _Hey! That was just one time!"_ God Eater retorted heatedly. _"Plus, I didn't shoot down the whole thing! I just happened to accidentally knock out one of its main thrusters... and three of the back-up engines... and maybe also the life-support system..."_

Uni let out a sigh as her two junior officers began their daily squabble. Thankfully, Brave came to her rescue as he redirected the conversation back to the matter at hand.

" _Uni, are you certain that this Rom is an impostor?"_ he asked. _"Because I just scanned her energy readings and I picked up a high concentration of share energy coming from her."_

Uni immediately turned serious again as she glared at her pinned target.

"Don't be fooled by that. I noticed her share energy too but that's not her main power source. I don't know what sort of energy it is but I can sense her using it to power her barrier right now. If this actually was the real Rom, she'd be using her share energy to power her spells instead."

Brave gave a simple "I see" as he seemed to accept Uni's explanation easily enough. And really, he had every reason to. Uni's energy detection skill had proven to be a reliable and indispensable asset ever since she had (re)trained herself to properly use it several weeks ago.

Of course, Uni hadn't told anyone about the true origin of this skill - or really any of her other major skills for that matter. While her inner circle knew of her status as a time traveler, she had kept certain details such as these under tight wraps. Not because she didn't trust them, of course, but because... well... how was she supposed to explain that the ones who had taught her these invaluable skills were their future selves? Future selves that had all ended up dying in the War because she had been too weak to-

Uni quickly shook her head as the dark shadows of her future past threatened to surface again. As far as she was concerned, there was no point ruminating about a time that no longer existed (or at least she hoped it no longer existed). She had received the miracle she had been seeking and she was prepared to do everything in her power to make sure that accursed future would never come to pass.

" _Er... Uni?"_ God Eater suddenly asked. _"Are you feeling okay? Cause you're letting out some really scary growling noises right now."_

Uni took a deep breath as she forced herself to calm down.

"I'm fine God Eater. I'm just... irritated that this impostor's barrier still hasn't come down." Following up on that excuse, Uni decided it was high time she actually did deal with this fake Rom.

"God Eater, 643. I want you two to keep watch over our prisoner." The ASIC extremist leader had gone mostly forgotten about until now but Uni had made sure to keep him in the back of her mind. Based on the situation, there was a decent likelihood that this fake Rom was trying to cause a distraction so that the extremist leader could escape. Luckily, Brave had remained as vigilant as ever and still held the slippery bastard at sword-point.

"Brave," Uni continued in a firm voice, "I'd rather avoid bringing out the big guns for this one. Think you can break through that barrier instead?"

There was a brief pause as Brave most likely calculated the probability of his success.

" _It's possible,"_ he eventually responded. _"With my recent upgrades, I should be able to- what the-?!"_

Uni felt the spike of energy coming from the impostor Rom before the spell activated. With no time to swap to a stronger weapon to stop her, Uni could do little but look towards the direction that the energy had gone. To her surprise, an enormous set of hands made of rock suddenly erupted out of the ground right next to Brave, 643, and God Eater. As Uni and her officers watched with shocked looks, three enormous stone golems, each the size of Brave, pulled themselves out from the ground before deafening the area with their roars.

" _What the hell?!"_ 643 shouted out in a panic.

Brave, on the other hand, did not waste any words before immediately swinging his sword around towards the golem closest to him. Surprisingly, Brave's sword managed to slice through the giant mass of stone with remarkable ease as the golem's severed upper torso fell to the ground with a resounding crash.

Just as Brave settled back into a neutral stance though, Uni felt a sudden surge of energy coming from the seemingly destroyed golem.

"Brave, watch out!"

The robot knight barely managed to jump out of the way as a large rocky fist suddenly swung a ferocious punch at him. Shifting her gaze to where the attack had come from, Uni was shocked to see that the arm had sprouted out of the golem's lower half. Even as she watched, the golem's severed upper torso sunk into the ground as if being absorbed before growing back out of its standing lower half. In less than a second, the stone golem was fully regrown as it let out another roar and resumed is attack on Brave.

Off to Uni's side, she heard 643 and God Eater take to the air using their flight processors as they pulled out their own weapons to fend off the golems coming after them.

" _Looks like I get to show off my new bullets after all!"_ God Eater enthusiastically declared.

" _Now's not the time!"_ 643 immediately shut down. _"Draw in their aggro with your sword and shield instead! Leave the long-range support to me!"_

Figuring the two could figure things out on their own, Uni decided to deal with the main source of their problem. Before doing so, however, she spared a quick glance towards their prisoner.

As expected, the ASIC extremist leader had immediately started running the moment Brave had become preoccupied with the golem. Thankfully, he was still within Uni's firing range as she quickly swapped out her Minigun for her tranquilizer pistol. With careful aim, she raised her gun and was just about to fire when she suddenly felt another surge of energy coming from the fake Rom. To her surprise though, she saw the fleeing terrorist leader fall face-first onto the dirt as his legs were spontaneously encased in ice.

 _What the-?_ Uni thought in confusion. _Does this mean she's not working with the extremist faction?_

The question went unanswered as she turned around to face the fake Rom. However, all she found was an empty wasteland as the impostor was nowhere to be seen.

 _Another invisibility spell? Tch, talk about pointless._

The impostor had apparently thought she had been bluffing when she mentioned locking onto her energy signature earlier. Too bad for her, Uni had been telling the truth as she could clearly sense the cloaked girl standing a few feet away from where she had originally been. However, Uni did not make it immediately apparent that she knew where her opponent was as she put on a confused expression and allowed her eyes to wander. At the same time, she switched out her tranquilizer pistol for an older-fashioned handgun, her modified Thompson Contender.

 _This should break through her magical defenses easily enough,_ Uni mused. _Now the question is, do I want to kill her outright or take her in for questioning?_

It didn't take her long to decide that there were far too many questions that would go unanswered if she went for the kill. With that in mind, she loaded in a regular armor-piercing bullet instead of her custom-made anti-mage bullet.

With her preparations set, Uni silently waited for her opponent to make her move.

The fake Rom remained still for a while longer as she most likely wanted to make sure that her opponent had not spotted her. Uni continued to play along as she waited for the impostor to lower her guard. Even when the fake Rom slowly moved a few feet to the right, Uni refused to act as she knew her opponent was likely using this as a test to see if Uni could really see her or not. It was only after a few more of these tentative steps that the impostor finally decided she was safe and broke out into a full-on run. Of course, that was when Uni finally decided to strike.

 _Gotcha you little faker._

With a triumphant smirk, she swiftly brought her Contender around and fired at where she sensed her opponent's leg to be.

With a shattering noise loud enough to be heard over the battle between her officers and the golems, the bullet pierced through the magical barrier and seemingly hit her target. To her surprise though, she saw something become visible as it was violently detached from the main mass of energy she sensed.

 _Shit. Did I accidentally take off her entire leg?_

Uni winced as she figured she had overestimated the faker's defenses. Due to her opponent's visage, she had mistakenly assumed she would be as durable as an actual CPU Candidate. Considering that a shot from her Contender was strong enough to break a CPU's bone even with their share protection (a fact Uni had tested multiple times during her past/future battles), it was very possible for a normal person, especially one as small as the faker, to lose an entire limb from the blast.

 _Dammit. I didn't mean to- wait. That's not a leg. That's..._

Upon taking a closer look, Uni noticed with a mixture of relief and confusion that the detached object was actually the fake Rom's muffin hat.

 _What...?_

Slowly, Uni began to realize what had actually happened. The impostor had most likely not been fooled by Uni's act and had reinforced her magical barrier at the last possible second. As a result, the bullet had been deflected severely off-course after punching through the insanely durable barrier and had ended up blasting off the faker's hat instead.

Uni's train of thought was halted right there as the ground suddenly began to shake. Looking over with wide eyes, she saw that the earthquake seemed to be emanating from the fake Rom as she slowly became visible once again.

"That was my favorite hat you know," the impostor growled, an unbelievably powerful aura of blue magical energy flaring up around her minute form.

Before Uni could react, the faker brought up her right hand in the form of a finger gun. This probably would've seemed funny were it not for the terrifying amount of energy that Uni sensed gathering at her fingertips.

With a bone-chilling glare that probably could've paralyzed normal humans, the fake Rom unleashed her attack.

"Niflheim Requiem!"

An enormous beam of freezing energy surrounded by a flurry of razor-sharp ice crystals blasted out of the faker's fingertips at a speed that even Uni's trained eyes had a hard time tracking. In fact, it was only due to her instincts honed through a lifetime of battle that she managed to automatically activate her Acceleration skill and dive out of the way at the last second. Even so, her left shoulder still ended up being clipped by the outer edges of the attack.

"Gah-!"

To her complete shock, the barrage of ice shards not only managed to pierce through her share protection but also her military jacket as it left a deep cut in her shoulder.

 _Wha- How is this possible?!_

Considering that her clothes were made from a highly advanced synthetic material that provided her with unparalleled defensive stats compared to anything found in the current time period, it was unfathomable that anything could touch her. And yet, this impostor had done just that with a single attack.

 _Dammit! Who the hell is this person?!_

Uni wasn't given a chance to properly recover as the fake Rom began moving. Rather than running away from Uni, however, she seemed to circle around her as if trying to flank her.

 _Like I'd let you, you little brat!_

Ignoring the pain coming from her shoulder, she swapped out her Contender for one of her larger, high-tech guns.

"Eat this!" Uni yelled, opening fire with her BFG.

To her surprise and growing irritation however, the green bursts of plasma were intercepted by several blue beams of energy. As the smoke from the resulting explosions cleared, Uni saw that a large circle of floating blue ice crystals had formed around the fake Rom and had most likely been the source of the interception fire. This guess turned out to be correct as the crystals began to speed up in their orbit before firing off another volley of energy beams at her.

It was now Uni's turn to go on the defensive as she activated her flight processors and took to the skies. With aerial maneuvering that would've put most professional pilots to shame, Uni managed to swerve past all of the energy blasts.

As she steadied herself in midair, Uni looked down and saw that her opponent was still running. Unfortunately, she had little time to pinpoint where exactly the little brat was trying to go as the ice crystals surrounding the faker began firing at her once more.

 _Tch... This is getting old real fast._ After intercepting the energy beams with multiple blasts from her BFG, she brought up a hand to her communications device and contacted Affimojas. The robot general (well, admiral now) promptly answered as Uni wasted no time in handing out her orders.

"Raise our cannons' energy output to thirty percent and target the fake Rom!"

Affimojas had most likely been keeping tabs on the battle below using the _Imperius's_ cameras as he gave no question about this rather overkill amount of firepower.

 _She should be able to survive this... probably,_ Uni thought grimly. Seconds later, she heard Affimojas give the order to fire.

A massive series of explosions resounded from above in response. However, none of them resembled the boom of the ships' cannons that Uni had expected.

Looking upwards, she was utterly dumbfounded to find her capital ship on fire as numerous gigantic explosions continued to detonate across its surface.

 _What?! H...How?! I didn't sense the faker direct any of her energy up there!_

"Affimojas!" she called out, a slight tinge of panic entering her voice. "Affimojas, are you okay? Answer me dammit!"

To her immense relief, the robot admiral replied a few seconds later.

" _We're fine Uni! None of the explosions reached the bridge! Damage reports are still coming in but it seems none of our main systems were hit!"_

Uni could not help but let out a sigh of relief as she tried to slow her racing heart.

 _Get it together Uni!_ she mentally berated herself. _You can't afford to freak out like that every time one of your comrades gets into danger!_

It was only after she had successfully managed to calm herself that she spoke up again.

"What exactly happened up there?"

There was a brief pause as Affimojas most likely received more intel from his crew members.

" _Our technicians have detected traces of a massive build-up of ice on our destroyed cannons,"_ Affimojas eventually reported. _"This is only conjecture but it seems the impostor CPU Candidate magically froze our cannons' barrels causing the backed-up energy to rebound internally. At the moment, all of the cannons within firing range of your location are either destroyed or shut-down from the damage done to the weapons' energy grid."_

Uni grit her teeth in frustration as she looked down towards the perpetrator of this act. To her surprise though, she found that the fake Rom was no longer running or even firing at her as she simply stood in place. To make matters even more confusing, she was currently looking down at her own self while angrily muttering something that Uni could not hear.

 _What exactly is her game here?!_ Uni thought, not able to figure out her opponent at all. _Is she trying to fight me or just simply annoy me?! And just how exactly did she disable my ships' cannons without me noticing?!_

After a moment of thought, an unsettling explanation crossed her mind.

 _Don't tell me... she can somehow cast spells without me noticing it?! But that's impossible! Even if she knows I was detecting her energy, how could she use her magic without it being noticeable at all?_

Unfortunately, she could not come up with any answers due to her rather limited knowledge of magic. The fact remained however that this fake Rom was clearly able to bypass one of her main advantages when fighting against a mage.

" _Uni,"_ Affimojas suddenly said, breaking her train of thought, _"should I send down some of our Alloy Gears to reinforce you?"_

Uni gave this some thought before deciding against it.

"Negative. I'll take care of this on my own."

If her assumptions were true and this fake Rom could in fact hide her energy while casting, then it was clear that she was heavily holding back. The wound on her shoulder proved that the impostor's attacks could easily kill her if they landed. The fact that she had dragged on this battle for so long without once attempting to stealthily cast a lethal blast from a blind-spot indicated that her goal was not to kill.

 _Of course, if I bring out all the stops and directly push her into a corner, there's no telling what she might do._

With that in mind, Uni decided her best bet was to catch her opponent by surprise and knock her out in one hit.

 _And I've got just the thing for a situation like this._

With a small smirk, she swapped out her BFG for a small silver pistol.

Sadly it seemed the fake Rom had finally finished with her bizarre rant as the ice crystals surrounding her suddenly shot towards the sky. Uni was forced to evade once more as the crystals began firing off multiple energy beams as they chased after her.

 _Something's not right here,_ she noted as she dodged. _There's no way this impostor would expect such an obvious attack to hit me. What's her goal here?_

This soon became obvious when she began to notice the energy beams purposefully blocking off her escape at specific points.

 _So she's trying to lure me somewhere. Hmph. No matter. I'll just play along until I can get close enough to her._

Uni purposefully made her movements look a bit shaky to continue giving the impression that she was under pressure. Eventually, the beams forced her near the ground several meters away from the fake Rom. Figuring this was as close as she could get, Uni swiftly brought up her silver pistol. Rather than pointing it towards her opponent, however, she aimed it at her own head.

 _Let's see how you like this_.

Without a grim smile on her face, Uni pulled the trigger.

"Persona!"

Instead of a gunshot, a sound like shattering glass echoed out from the gun (actually an Evoker) as what looked like transparent shards of energy blasted out from Uni's head. The shards immediately began to spiral around her before a large humanoid form slowly began to take shape above her.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

With a deafening roar filled with insanity and rage, her Persona became fully materialized. Resembling an enormous giant of a man with ash-white skin, red war paint, and clad only in a leather loincloth and armlets, her Persona struck a terrifying figure with just his mere presence. This effect was only further enhanced by the pair of blazing swords that were linked to two long metal chains that were tightly wound across each of his muscular forearms.

With her smile widening at the shocked look the fake Rom was giving her, Uni swept out her hand in front of her. With another frenzied roar, her Persona threw out both of his blazing swords before swinging them around on their chains. All of the floating crystals were instantly destroyed by her Persona's attack as the air around Uni sparkled from all the shattered ice shards.

"Time to end this," Uni declared. With a triumphant look, she pointed towards the fake Rom with an air of finality. "Finish her."

Mentally, however, she ordered her Persona to strike his target with the flat of his blade. Even with all the trouble the faker had caused, Uni decided it would still be wise to capture her alive for questioning.

Her Persona obediently did as told as he retrieved his blades before hurling them once more towards his new target.

 _Let's see you try to block this one you little brat._

From what she had seen of her opponent so far, she knew that the fake Rom preferred to block her opponent's attacks rather than dodge them. Unfortunately for her, the only way to block a Persona's attack was with another Persona.

 _And it's not like she'd be able to- WHAT?!_

Uni felt her mouth open in astonishment as the fake Rom suddenly brought out a blue spell book and held it open in her palm. The main cause of Uni's surprise, however, came from the large glowing card that suddenly appeared over the open book. Before her disbelieving eyes, the fake Rom snapped the book shut causing the card to shatter into a very familiar veil of glowing shards.

"Persona!"

The flaming blades from Uni's Persona were violently deflected as an enormous pillar of light shot up around the impostor. As the light slowly cleared, Uni was utterly flabbergasted to find herself staring at another Persona.

Floating regally above the fake Rom was a beautiful young woman with pointed ears and flowing blue hair. Clad in an elegant blue and green dress, she seemed to radiate a wise and serene air that contrasted sharply with Uni's own brutish Persona.

 _Im...Impossible!_ Uni stammered as she looked upon this sight. _There's no way this impostor could know how to summon a Persona! I know for a fact that Ms. Atlus won't show up in this dimension for another twenty years at the least! And as far as I know, she's the only one who knows how to bring out one's Persona!"_

She did not get a chance to properly recover as the fake Rom suddenly gestured towards her with her free hand. Her Persona immediately answered by lifting up her own hand so that her palm faced towards her foes. A very familiar array of three golden triangles suddenly appeared in the air between them as an immense feeling of power radiated from the magic symbol. As Uni stared with wide eyes, the triangle on the bottom left suddenly began to glow brighter as the other two triangles rotated inwards as if being drawn into it. As soon as the three pieces overlapped, something that could only be described as a magical black hole formed in the center of the fused triangles as Uni's Persona began to be sucked towards it.

 _No!_ Uni mentally cried out, finally getting over her shock.

Her Persona desperately tried to resist the magical force drawing him in but to no avail. All he could do was let out a furious scream as he was swept up into the glowing triangle's vortex like an ant in a water drain. With it's prey captured, the magic triangle immediately began to get smaller as Uni felt an uncomfortably familiar feeling of defeat and despair closing in on her.

 _No... I refuse to let it end like this!_

As if responding to her furious resolve, Uni's Persona gave one final roar as it threw out one of his flaming blades just as the vortex closed behind it and severed the chain. Miraculously, the sword managed to find its mark as the fake Rom's Persona was directly impaled through the chest. The blue-haired woman had just enough time to let out a pained cry before she disappeared in an explosion of bright light. Unfortunately, her demise came too late to stop the spell as the triangle finished shrinking down to a dot before exploding into a burst of light as well.

"Argh-!"

Uni lost control of her flight processors and fell to the ground as the shock and pain of having her Persona destroyed momentarily stunned her. Judging by the pained sound coming from in front of her, it was clear that the fake Rom was similarly incapacitated.

 _N... Now's my chance,_ Uni thought, desperately trying to clear the daze in her head. _I just need to get to her first and-_

Sadly, things once again did not go her way as the fake Rom recovered before her. To her surprise, however, her opponent did not fire off a spell and instead ran forward before launching a full-body tackle against her.

Caught completely off-guard by this unorthodox move, Uni was easily knocked off her feet as the two went tumbling across the wasteland. Eventually though, Uni managed to regain her senses and knocked away the younger girl with a vicious kick. Coming to a halt in a low crouch, Uni pulled out her Thompson Contender again with her free hand as she looked up to see where her opponent had ended up.

As it turned out, the fake Rom had managed to land on her feet several meters away from her as she stood panting. More importantly, however, Uni quickly realized that the impostor was holding something in her right hand.

 _What the-_

That was all she managed before the younger girl pressed the bright red button on the metal object she was holding.

The next thing Uni knew, the entire world seemed to disappear in an explosion of molten rock and fire.

* * *

 _Maybe I went a little overboard with that flame-enhancement charm..._

The combination of the ASIC extremist leader's trap along with her spell had ended up creating a much larger explosion than Rom had anticipated. It was almost as if a small volcano had erupted as the entire wasteland was covered in fire, smoke, and molten debris. In fact, she probably would have been caught up in the massive blast as well if she had not formed a powerful magical barrier to protect herself.

 _I'm sure Uni managed to survive that._ Several large pieces of flaming rock crashed against her barrier as she thought this, casting a bit of doubt on her assessment. _Um... I hope_.

Shaking her head, she quickly decided to put aside her concerns for after she had safely gotten out of the area.

 _Ugh. This ended up being a lot messier than I anticipated,_ Rom groused, gathering up her Spirit Energy once more. _I especially wasn't expecting Uni to pull out a Persona of all things. I thought Atlus was the only one who could unlock one's potential for that. Well, either way, I suppose I should be grateful she taught me how to summon my own Persona during our meeting. Otherwise this battle could've gotten extremely troublesome. Hmm... maybe I'll buy Atlus a cake as thanks once I get back to my own time period._

Even as she thought this, she continued to carefully prepare her spell.

Originally, her plan had been to activate her HDD and fly away at this point but that was no longer an option. She had tried to activate her transformation earlier while Uni had been distracted by her ship blowing up but Rom had found an unknown force preventing her from doing so. After venting her confusion and ire for a bit, she had realized that the hidden third party was the most likely culprit for her sudden inability to activate her HDD. She had no idea how they were doing it but it was clear this interloper was trying to force the fight to last as long as possible and was not going to allow Rom to escape prematurely. However, Rom had quickly come up with a back-up plan to get around this.

 _Let's see them try to stop me now._

With that thought, Rom activated the most advanced cloaking spell she knew.

Rom swiftly disappeared from view as she became invisible once more. This time however, she was also covered in an advanced form of the energy cloaking spell she had used earlier against Uni. Unlike her previous one, this cloaking spell not only hid the energy she projected outward while casting but also her inner reserves. Essentially, she was now completely undetectable both physically and magically.

After casting a lightweight charm on herself as well to make sure she wouldn't leave any noticeable footprints, Rom broke out into a run.

 _I just need to get far enough away from Uni's forces and this hidden enemy_. _After that, I should be able to use my HDD again to-_

That was as far as Rom got before she suddenly found herself frozen in place by an unknown magical force.

 _What? No! How could they have found me?!_

Even as she thought this, Rom felt all of the spells she had cast on herself dispel itself as well. At the same time, the same infuriating giggle from before sounded out from right next to her once more.

"Who the fuck are you?!" Rom shouted out. "Why are you-"

Her outburst was cut short as the debris cloud near her suddenly parted. Rom's eyes went wide as she saw Uni burst forward with an overwhelming fury burning in her eyes. Her jacket was in complete tatters and her entire body was covered in countless bloody cuts and burns but none of that seemed to hinder her in the least as she rushed towards her enemy. Without any regard for the fact that her target was a small child, Uni launched out a vicious roundhouse kick that seemed to break the sound barrier itself.

With all of her defensive spells stripped away and her body still frozen, Rom had no way to defend herself as the devastating blow connected directly against her body.

"Urk-!"

That was all that managed to escape Rom's mouth before she was sent flying across the wasteland. Everything disappeared into a dizzying mix of pain, motion, and blurred shapes as she bounced across the rocky terrain several times. After what felt like an eternity, she finally reached the end of her flight as she vaguely registered herself skidding to a halt across her back.

By this point, Rom was barely clinging onto her consciousness as she dazedly tried to focus and take stock of her condition. It was clear her share protection had saved her from any outright lethal damage but it was clear she was in pretty bad shape. Even without an analysis spell, she could tell she was suffering from a major concussion as her entire head seemed to be ringing. Her body was also equally injured as her right arm and both her legs refused to move. It was very likely she was suffering from multiple broken bones but it was hard to tell due to her body being numb with shock at the moment. Of course, this was probably for the best as she figured the pain would've been enough to knock her out immediately if she had been able to fully feel it.

 _I need to... heal myself... quick..._

Her countless years of training and battle allowed her to almost instinctively cast a healing spell on herself despite her condition. Her head began to clear up just a tiny bit thanks to this though the ringing continued to persist.

Before she could heal herself any further though, multiple footsteps were heard approaching her.

"No more games," Rom heard Uni growl in a murderous tone.

As her vision slowly focused, Rom saw that she was completely surrounded. Forming a loose perimeter around her were Brave, God Eater, and the reformed ASIC thug. Most likely, her golems had been dispelled either from the mysterious interloper earlier or due to the damage she had just suffered which allowed the three followers to finally confront her. However, the main threat at the moment came from Uni herself as she stood in front of her while pointing the old-fashioned handgun from before directly at Rom's head.

"I tried to play nice but you just had to go and piss me off," Uni snarled, her hand shaking a bit from what was presumably a mix of rage and fatigue.

"Uni, calm down," Rom heard Brave say from behind her. "You've already taken her down. There's no need to-"

"No! That's just what she wants you to think!" Uni yelled, a touch of madness entering her voice. "Every single time I force her into a corner, she somehow finds a way out! Well no more! Nothing's going to stop me from attaining my victory now!"

Before anyone could stop her, Uni pulled the trigger. Luckily, her shaking hand botched up her aim as the bullet ended up hitting the ground several feet away from Rom's head instead.

"Uni!"

"Commander, stop!"

Rom meanwhile finally realized the seriousness of her situation. She had no idea what the deal was with this Uni but it was clear that she had accidentally pushed the unstable CPU Candidate past her mental tipping point. As things stood, it was very likely that this Uni would actually kill her if she wasn't stopped. However, in her current condition, the only way Rom could feasibly stop her was by...

 _No,_ she stopped herself. _Killing her isn't the answer. That's probably what the hidden enemy wants anyways. I need to figure out a different way to..._

Rom gave a wince as the ringing in her head became louder.

 _Fuck! Why won't this damn sound go away?! I need to focus on..._

She stopped as a sudden realization struck her.

 _Wait... Is this... my notification spell?_

Before she could ponder about this any further, Uni roughly pushed aside God Eater (who had stepped in to try and stop her) and approached Rom once again. Ignoring the protests from her followers, she leveled her gun at Rom with a cold glare.

"Time to end this for good," she said in a deadly whisper. "Say goodnight you little-"

She never got to finish as a sudden flash of white appeared between them.

"What the-?!"

As Rom watched with wide eyes, several long strips of white cloth suddenly shot forward and wrapped around Uni's form. In the blink of an eye, the Lastation CPU Candidate was completely restrained as her arms were tightly bound against her body. Not only that, Rom saw that the rest of Uni's followers were similarly tied up as well by several other lengths of the bizarre white cloth.

"You know," a voice suddenly called out from their side, "this probably fits into my list of Top Ten Weirdest Scenarios I've Teleported Into. And considering some of the other stuff on that list, that's saying a lot."

Rom found her mouth opening in shock as she immediately recognized this familiar voice. Hardly daring to believe it, she slowly and painfully turned her head towards the direction the voice had come from and found...

...a giant mass of pink foam.

"Huh?"

The giant mass of foam seemed to give an amused chuckle at her baffled expression before speaking up once again.

"Heh, I have to say you really got me good with your little prank," the foam said with a laugh. "It's been a while since I actually fell for something like that. But anyways, mind dispelling the paralysis spell now? It's kinda hard to move around with it and I want to get rid of all this foam."

A small part of Rom wondered how anyone could move at all while under the effect of her paralysis rune. However, she was too stunned to really pay this much mind as she simply did as asked.

"Thanks!"

With that, a bright flash of pink light lit up the area before the mass of foam exploded outward. Everyone gathered ended up being splattered by bits of the flying foam (with Uni getting the majority of it) before the light swiftly faded away and the newcomer finally became visible.

Gone were her standard pink muffin hat and winter outfit. Instead she wore a pink and white blouse with short ruffly sleeves, a long pink skirt with slits at the sides, and a pink beret with a golden star on it. The thing that really stood out, however, was her completely bandaged left arm which turned out to be the source of the restraining lengths of cloth that held Uni and her comrades in place.

"You-!" Uni yelled, recognition finally entering her furious eyes.

Her response was met with an obnoxiously loud laugh.

"Yup! Me!"

With a large grin on her face, the rambunctious rascal struck a silly heroic pose as she held out her left hand in a victory sign towards Rom.

"There's no need to fear, for the ultimate protagonist Ram is here!"

* * *

 **And thus the insanity meter rises to critical levels. I bet even Neptune would have a hard time making sense of all this craziness. Maybe it's for the best that she continues being trapped in the Gamindustri Graveyard for the time being...**

 **Normally I'd put my author's notes at the start of the story but I figured it'd make more sense to talk about this after Ram's big reveal. As I'm sure you've noticed by now, there's actually a new cover-art for this story! I want to give a big thank you and shout-out to Weresdrim for the amazing artwork of Future Rom and Ram! Be sure to follow them on their Twitter/DeviantArt page and leave a nice comment if you like the new cover-art as well! :D**

 **Oh, a few things to note though to avoid confusion. First is that Rom is still in her canon outfit in the story (minus the hat at the moment). Second is that Rom and Ram's actual ages in the story differ a bit from the cover-art. Rom's is pretty close but Ram is... well, you'll see. Either way, the artwork should definitely give a good general idea of what the two would look like in their late teens/early twenties.**

 **Anyways, be sure to leave a review! I really want to know what you all thought about this roller-coaster of a chapter. Everyone who does so can have some of Nepgear's popcorn as thanks! Of course, I'm not responsible for any injuries or deaths resulting from the Gehaburn not wanting to share. :P**


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